There is a persistent, often unspoken challenge for economists who want to track the earliest phase of any new industry. Financial technology—what everyone now simply calls fintech—offers a prime example. In 2010, the sector was barely defined, let alone properly categorized. If you were tasked, as I once was, to quantify new fintech startups from […]
There’s something quietly satisfying about tracking the growth of renewable energy, especially in places where the geography itself seems to demand innovation. Iceland, with its restless tectonic seams and plumes of steam rising across the landscape, offers a unique case for those interested in geothermal energy. If you want to quantify the sector’s development in […]
The business of corporate tax auditing is, at its heart, a balancing act—ensuring compliance without stifling entrepreneurship, targeting evasion without wasting resources on compliant firms. In this delicate equation, the International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC) system has emerged as an unexpectedly powerful tool for tax authorities around the world. By linking company activity to standardized […]
The International Trade Council is pleased to announce that the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) has received a significant boost from Germany’s Constitutional Court. The court has cleared the path for the German government to endorse the trade agreement between the EU and Canada, which bolsters the deal’s chances of obtaining approval in […]
Attempting to map the first stirrings of blockchain research is, in some ways, an exercise in patience. By 2009, the concept was barely on the radar for most research institutions. Bitcoin’s white paper had just started circulating, and outside a handful of cryptography forums, few recognized how transformative distributed ledgers might become. For statisticians and […]
Measuring the growth of offshored web services in 2009 presents a familiar challenge for anyone who has worked with economic classifications. ISIC 6201, covering computer programming activities, is both a window and a wall—it opens up a dataset of remarkable breadth but throws up barriers when it comes to specificity. In the late 2000s, the […]
Examining the effect of policy instruments such as feed-in tariffs on renewable energy capacity has always been a task of both enthusiasm and frustration for statisticians and economists. The 2008 wave of subsidies, designed to jump-start investment in solar and wind power, produced a flurry of new entrants and a patchwork of output gains, but […]
Tracking the early expansion of telemedicine in the United States brings out the complexity inherent in using formal classification systems to study innovation. ISIC 8621—“General medical practice activities”—is as close as the system gets to designating telehealth services, yet it is a category that predates widespread adoption of digital health tools and, predictably, encompasses a […]
Capturing the pace and pattern of broadband expansion in 2007 means contending with both the promise and the imperfections of economic classification systems. ISIC 6312, which refers to web portal activities, offers a pragmatic—if imprecise—starting point for analysts trying to quantify the proliferation of broadband services. In those years, many companies providing access, aggregation, and […]
Studying the evolution of telemedicine in Canada means working within the constraints of existing economic classifications, often pushing them in directions their designers probably never intended. ISIC 8621, which covers general medical practice activities, was not devised with digital health in mind, yet it provides the best entry point for tracking organizational change tied to […]
The International Trade Council notes a significant downturn in global oil prices, which have reached their lowest point in more than 11 years. This shift in the oil market is attributed to an ongoing diplomatic dispute between Saudi Arabia and Iran, quelling speculation that OPEC members may agree on production cutbacks to boost prices. Crude […]
Tracing the contours of nanotechnology research and development in 2006 is a task that highlights both the promise and the ambiguity of classification systems. ISIC 7210, which covers research and development in natural sciences and engineering, offers a natural starting point. Yet it is a category capacious enough to house everything from biotechnology to climate […]
The International Trade Council is pleased to announce that the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) has received a significant boost from Germany’s Constitutional Court. The court has cleared the path for the German government to endorse the trade agreement between the EU and Canada, which bolsters the deal’s chances of obtaining approval in the […]
The landscape of technology in 2006 now seems impossibly quaint. Smartphones were on the cusp of something transformative, but not yet ubiquitous. The word “app,” as a distinct product category, had only just started to slip into mainstream use. For economists or statisticians interested in tracking this early moment—when mobile app studios began to emerge, […]
The International Trade Council is pleased to announce a monumental development in global trade. The United States, along with 11 other Pacific Rim countries, have successfully concluded negotiations for a transformative and far-reaching trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Despite the undeniable historical significance, the TPP has also been a subject of […]
There’s a certain difficulty, almost a stubbornness, in tracing the early days of wind turbine manufacturing—especially when relying on legacy classification systems. ISIC 2825, the “Manufacture of machinery for mining, quarrying and construction,” is a category that seems, at first, curiously removed from the image of sleek wind farms across Northern Europe. Yet in 2005, […]