services sector – Economics of Information Society

The services economy: Revisiting Baumol’s cost disease

The services economy: Revisiting Baumol’s cost disease Phuah Eng Chye (26 August 2017) If we are to meet the growth challenges of the future, the answer isn’t likely to lie in creating more manufacturing plants and jobs. The answer must lie in how we are able to harness and manage growth in the services sector; … “The services economy: Revisiting Baumol’s cost disease”

Phuah Eng Chye

I was formerly a securities regulator and equities analyst. I started writing these articles (and a book) because I felt that there were a lot of economic theories that didn’t seem to match up to the realities we are facing. This also means that a lot of policies (based on these theories) are wrong. So I’ve tried to make sense of how things worked based on the paradigm of an information society. Its a challenging topic and difficult to pin down. This means I have had to explore issues over a wide range of policy areas. Over the next few months, I will cover the service economy, the sharing economy, household and work structures before moving onto policy issues on the anorexic economy (role of corporates, basic income, housing affordability) and the financialisation process (capital, monetary policy, securities regulation).

Date	Article/Event
27 April 2024	The dismal decade (Part 5: China and Japanification risks)