In recent decades, we have witnessed a rapidly growing interest in digital technologies including the Internet of Things, Additive Manufacturing, Big Data and Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Robotic Systems, among others, and these digital technologies have become a vital driver of national competitiveness. The fast-growing pace of digitalization has reshaped major industries in terms of how and where firm value is created, and has changed labour markets in terms of jobs and productivity. In the context of international connectedness across the globe, it is pertinent to explore how digital technologies occur within or outside the geographical boundaries and how they have impacted firms’ operations, and to address how these technologies influence the globalised labour market, and to understand the mechanisms and channels through which the digitalised technologies influence labour and operations in the globalised world.

Digitalisation leads to the creation of digital platforms and ecosystem as a venue for knowledge creation and sharing, and there is an increased interaction with different market actors such as enterprises, government, suppliers, customers and non-profit organisations via digital platforms, and these benefits from new knowledge creation, cost-related efficiency and greater interaction collectively have impacted the production efficiency of companies. The parallel growth of this line of research is the relationship between digital technology adoption and employment, and in many cases empirical studies have arrived at mixed evidence, in terms of whether there is job augmentation, substitution, destruction or displacement. Allied to this, is the influence of digital adoption on labour market activities, productivity, skill requirements and innovation, and equally important, it may not impact all countries equally.

The differences across countries could be a double-edged sword for businesses. On the one hand, the differences across countries in formal and informal institutions, in the form of regulations, norms and culture, as well as the differences in demographic, economic and digital infrastructure, have a detrimental effect on the creation and adoption of digital technologies. These differences, combined with digital divide across countries, give rise to the problems of IP protection and digital technology capacity differences, leading to rising costs in monitoring and coordinating digital activities in the globalised labour markets and international production. On the other hand, the differences in economic and institutional conditions across countries offer learning opportunities and arbitrage. Companies with much advanced digital technologies and know-how, when investing in countries with weak digital capabilities, have competitive advantages against local incumbents. Foreign investment — and multinationals — have become crucial drivers of globalization in the past few decades, and with the rising impact of industry 4.0, it is pertinent to understand the implication of digitalisation on globalised labour markets and international production.

In recent years, a few papers (e.g., Cords & Prettner, 2022; Jayaraman et al., 2023; Bragoli et al., 2024; Drydakis, 2024; Hötte et al., 2024; Kaus et al., 2024) on AI and innovation related issues have already been published in Oxford Economic Papers. In this special issue, we are interested in presenting empirical research that broadly covers the themes relating to the international operations and globalised labour markets in the context of digitalisation revolution. Empirical work should carefully consider the identification strategy, with a focus on estimating causal effects. For example, a quasi-experimental approach can be used to estimate the causal effect of digitalisation on production efficiency and labour productivity. Specific topics including but not limiting to the following areas are highly encouraged:

·Digitalisation, international trade and foreign investments

·Online job markets and digital technologies

·IP protection, digital technology and global operations

·Labour market, productivity, skills and innovation in the digital revolution

·Digitalisation and global value chain participations

·Globalised labour markets and digital technologies

·International business, law and the digital economy

·Intra- and Inter- firm knowledge flows in the digitalised world

·Industry 4.0 and its impacts on international production and labour markets

·Digital divide, public policy and global operations

·Government intervention/regulations, digital transformation and global operations

·Offshoring and employment in the digital environment

·Global operations, digital platform and firm efficiency

·Digital inclusion and its economy-wide effects, including innovation and international production.