To ensure reliable, affordable, and sustainable future power supplies many countries in Southeast Asia are exploring options for new generation. Floating solar photovoltaics (FPV) are becoming an increasingly competitive option. However, the technology is still nascent, and many potential adopters have questions about its benefits, how to analyze it appropriately, and the underlying technology.

This presentation discusses what happens in the sandbox once a FinTech entity has been admitted into the sandbox. It also offers some guidance on determining the testing parameters, restrictions and ongoing obligations, and regulatory flexibility.​

This presentation provides guidance on defining the eligibility of interested FinTech players as well as determining the application/selection process for admittance to the sandbox. It also offers a snapshot of how current regulators such as the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) manage these processes.

The number of regulatory sandboxes are increasing, with different regulators organizing them. This presentation presents a global overview of regulatory sandboxes, a programme allowing FinTech firms to test new solutions in an actual market environment under regulatory supervision, but without necessarily incurring all existing regulatory restrictions. It also offers some case studies of regulatory sandboxes established in Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, and Oceania.

In discussing the presentation on the “Firm and Worker Dynamics in an Aging Labor Market” by Niklas Engbom, the presenter offers an alternative method to separate the direct age effect on job-to-job mobility. He also encouraged the authors to quantify the contribution of "on-the-job search" on business dynamism, and provide some empirical evidence that the entry rate by age does not change significantly between early and late periods.

The author assesses the impact of an aging labor force on business dynamism, labor market fluidity, and economic growth. The analysis embeds endogenous growth through creative destruction in an equilibrium job ladder model, highlighting feedback between the extent of mismatch in the labor market and incentives to innovate. Using cross-state variation and instrumenting for the incidence of aging using lagged age shares, the author found additional empirical support for the prediction of significant effects of aging on dynamism and growth.

In discussing the presentation on “Demographics and Innovation” by François Derrien, the speaker noted that the paper successfully gathered various data to control for factors that appear to be correlated with age structure and innovation. She also underscored the policy implications of coping with an aging population, such as incentivizing childbirth and encouraging younger and skilled immigration. She further expressed curiosity on whether the authors would draw a similar conclusion if their analysis would be conducted using data from Asian countries.​

Are younger labor forces more innovative? The authors attempt to answer this question using the native-born labor force projected based on local historical births in the US. They used three successive levels of analysis to eliminate or examine effects such as firm and inventor life cycles. They also established that innovation activities reflect the innovative characteristics of younger labor forces, and firms in younger labor markets have higher valuations.

Mutual cooperation among localities can promote economy of scale and scope in service delivery, and efficiency in resource utilization, among its other perceived benefits. More specifically, a governance-based type of inter-local mutual cooperation that can be realized through communication, compromise, and conflict resolution is needed.