CKGSB Report

CKGSB Professor of Finance Dr Zhou Chunsheng has published a new book, Limitless Supply: New Economy in the Digital Era, which is the first to introduce the new concept of limitless supply and its implications for the digital economy and supply economics at both macro and micro- levels.

Key features:

• First book to systematically explore limitless supply in the digital era
• Provides a unified theoretical framework on understanding the new economy
• Covers pricing and business model choices of products with limitless supply
• Investigates business strategies and growth patterns of enterprises with limitless supply products
• Contains interesting materials on the development of the digital economy in China

Scarcity hypothesis is the cornerstone of traditional economic theory. However, in the digital era, many essential production factors and products, have challenged traditional economic wisdom. Technologies and data are the most important production factors in the new economy. A technology or a set of data, whenever owned by a company, will no longer be scarce, since it can be used as many times and as frequently as the company wants. For example, Microsoft can supply as many copies of Windows and office systems as it wants and Tencent can accommodate all of the people who want to download WeChat. Zhou’s new book sets out to explain various economic phenomena in the digital era.

This book analyses and summarizes the basic features of limitless supply products, and compares the differences and similarities of how limited supply and limitless supply products are manufactured, priced and marketed. It also provides reasons for why manufacturers of limitless supply products create intangible assets. It argues that the scale of an enterprise producing limitless supply products depends on the number of users, whereas the scale of an enterprise producing limited supply products depends on the production capacity.

Zhou’s book is mainly written to construct a preliminary, simple, yet relatively comprehensive economic theory framework for limitless supply, and to interpret the phenomena and corporate behaviour. It further explores how enterprises providing limitless supply products grow financially and proposes the fundamental difference in growth models between enterprises providing limitless supply products and those providing limited supply products. The new theory proposed in the book can well explain many interesting new features of the new economy, such as new corporate competitive strategies, the “head effect” in the market structure, and the “free” model of internet services, among others.

The book can be purchased on World Scientific online bookshop with a promo code (WSEFBM20) at 20% off (valid till 31 Oct 2022). It is also available on Amazon.

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1 New Economy Driven by Innovation and Digitalization
Chapter 2 Limitless Supply Triggered by Innovation, Digitalization and Technology
Chapter 3 Influence of Limitless Supply and Technological Development on GDP
Chapter 4 Unique Features of How Limitless Supply Products Generate Profits
Chapter 5 How Enterprises Grow with Limitless Supply
Chapter 6 Positive Feedback and Fission-Type Growth
Chapter 7 From Product Competition to Ecosystem Strategy
Chapter 8 Reflecting on New Policies in the Era of New Economy
Appendix: Theories and Simple Models of Limitless Supply Economics 

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