A state’s entitlement to tax a person is said to rest on either source, which is a connection between the state and the income, or residence, which is a connection between the state and the owner of the income. The source state can tax income sourced in the state, whereas the residence state can tax all of the resident’s income. Historically, these bases for tax were uncontroversial because most people earned all or almost all their income in a single state. Digitalization and globalization have changed how people live their lives, however, and have provoked questions about whether states can assert an unlimited entitlement to tax all of a person’s worldwide income, even if that person does not reside in its territory. This chapter demonstrates that income taxation of individuals in the twenty-first century does not require a personal link of the ’residence’ kind. It details policy options that would preserve the personal income tax on individuals without a singular reliance on a person having a sole residence. Ending the reliance on residence would alleviate many of the most pressing challenges facing the international tax regime, including the taxation of remote workers, digital services, and digital nomads.

The venture capital ecosystem in Africa is thriving. With multiple large investor rounds and exits in the 2020s, the continent transitioned from having not a single unicorn in 2016 to seven start-ups worth over US$1 billion in less than a decade, while five unicorns were born in 2021 alone. Even though many start-ups on the continent gain traction organically, the current paradigm is no substitute for finding a competitive regional strategy that offers a sustainable flow of successful scale ups that then obtain unicorn status. There is a vast difference in institutional structure, resources and capabilities between African countries and what is found elsewhere. Africa faces different sets of challenges that require a unique approach to venture creation. Reforms capable of strengthening existing policy frameworks, skills development initiatives and a financing architecture that supports entrepreneurship along the entire value chain will be critical in the African context. This chapter situates policy innovation in the context of Africa’s bubbling venture capital ecosystem as a key contributor to unicorn emergence.

This chapter examines the factors which influence the entrepreneurial ecosystems in member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). We present four stylised case studies of successful entrepreneurship featuring Asian unicorns: Bitkub, PrimaKu, Bolttech and Maya. The entrepreneurial ecosystem in Singapore is vibrant, with a growing number of start-ups and venture capital funding sources. Indonesia is seen as the home of somewhat surprisingly successful ventures, whereas the entrepreneurial ecosystems of Thailand and the Philippines are still at an earlier stage of development. The region’s entrepreneurial climate has been continuously improving, facilitating the emergence of more start-ups and a more supportive ecosystem. ASEAN economies embrace digital technologies and leverage them for economic and social advancement. E-commerce businesses in ASEAN have significant growth potential.

The chapter discusses the evolution of justice and dispute resolution in the era of LawTech (LT). Traditional taxonomies of justice are mirrored in new forms of digital dispute settlement (DDS), where the idealized Justice Hercules is compared to the prospect of robo-judges. Currently, LT primarily supports traditional courts as they transition to e-courts. Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) is evolving into online dispute resolution (ODR), with blockchain-based crowdsourcing emerging as a potential alternative to traditional justice. Hybrid models of dispute resolution are also taking shape. The chapter outlines assessment criteria for adopting LT in digital systems, focusing on ensuring that DS in the digital economy remains independent, impartial, and enforceable. Human centricity is core construct for the co-development of LT and DS. This overarching principle requires human oversight, transparency, data privacy, and fairness in both access and outcomes.

Geopolitical forces are fundamentally altering the landscape of e-commerce and digital trade. Cross-border e-commerce is increasingly fragmented along geopolitical lines, as e-commerce companies are forced to reckon with the security implications of their operations. This includes governments’ concerns about data security and sovereignty. When foreign firms collect extensive data on the behavior of the country’s customers, there is potential for those data to be exploited in shaping consumer behavior or spreading information in the country. Additionally, when a foreign firm plays an important role in the domestic economy, local governments have limited means to encourage those firms to act in the “national interest” or broader societal and economic goals beyond maximizing profits. Because of these concerns, governments have adopted policies to shape the behavior of e-commerce companies. This includes shaping market access, level playing field, investment security, and institutional alignment. E-commerce companies have adopted various strategies to manage corporate nationality and geopolitical tensions, including masking country of origin, diversifying supply chains, relocating control rights, focusing on alternate markets, and corporate diplomacy.

The chapter offers an insight into the highly fluid field of digital trade rulemaking as a direct reaction to digital transformations. Against the backdrop of the evolution of the trade policy discourse beyond online trade in goods and services and the emergence of new digital protectionism, the chapter explores the dynamics of digital trade regulation in the past decade in a complex geopolitical setting by looking at some broader trends, as well as distinct regulatory models (exemplified by the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA), the European Union–United Kingdom Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)) and the new templates of the digital economy agreements (DEAs) that also signal room for regulatory innovation in trade law. The chapter’s enquiry seeks to identify new design elements found in preferential trade agreements (PTAs), to trace how these have diffused over time, and to ask what their implications for domestic regulatory space may be. Finally and linking to the multilateral discussions on electronic commerce, the chapter tests to what extent PTAs have worked as regulatory laboratories and whether some of the newly emerged digital trade rules can be multilateralised.

In a world of weaponized interdependence, middle powers have policy choices that can enhance their autonomy. However, having this policy space is not enough. In order to turn the policy space into policy enactment, domestic politics has to align in a particular way. This chapter considers India and Brazil as examples of “middle powers” and analyzes their capacity to enact autonomy and safeguard their digital sovereignty. The authors argue that when independent institutions’ interests are incorporated into the policymaking process and are not usurped by the parliamentary (political) process, they observe the enactment of autonomy-enhancing policies. Brazil’s and India’s data localization policies are illustrative case studies. While Brazil and India are both open democracies with a technoeconomic landscapes characterized by a similar technoeconomic landscape with a hybrid mixture of foreign-owned and domestically owned companies, they have adopted different data localization policies. The authors argue that the divergent paths of Brazil and India are due to the nature of the policymaking process. India’s policymaking incorporated the interests of independent institutions. In contrast, Brazil’s parliamentary process usurped policymaking power from its independent institutions and has not yet granted the mandate and tools to either existing or necessary new institutions, such as regulatory agencies, to address this emerging and already pressing set of issues. Thus, for countries to enact policies to enhance their digital sovereignty, the interests of independent institutions must be incorporated, and their power must be increased.

The world of digital commerce is relatively new. It is a by-product of an information technology revolution that started with the invention of the integrated circuit, carried forward with advances in computing and unleashed with the creation of the internet. Digital commerce is familiar in some respects and dramatically different in others from the world of trade that preceded it. It poses special problems of privacy, unwanted communication, and new kinds of competition, stemming from the flow of data across borders. It gave rise to the need to devise rules for its nurture and management. It makes the most sense for the rules to be global, as without interference from governments, e-commerce is global. It creates opportunities as never experienced before for innovation and for individual and small business involvement in international commerce. This is the story of the evolution of the process of rule-making in the age of digital commerce.

Chapter 2 gives an extensive overview of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and how it will significantly change the way the world works. It is defined as a bridge for digital transformation and an innovative combination of “cyber-physical” systems. To better understand the 4IR, the previous three are broken down to give contextual background. The chapter highlights the exact technologies that will shape the broad themes and implications of the 4IR. These technologies include 3D printing, advanced material science, artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain, cloud computing, drones and automation, high-speed internet (5G technology), the Internet of Things, nanotechnology, and quantum computers. The technologies are explained and applied to how they are already being used in Africa or how they might be used. The chapter concludes with several themes based on the analysis of technologies and their characteristics. The four themes are productivity and sustainability, disruption and structural transformation, cooperation and inclusivity, security, privacy, and data integrity.

In recent years, the competition law community has become absorbed in discussions around the dominance of the largest digital platform companies: Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft. Such discussions, for example about the meaning of power in the digital age, have helped to shift the field beyond its narrow focus on price and output effects. Yet, a crucial dimension is missing from the vast majority of commentary on competition law and the digital economy: the role of financialisation. Financialisation—understood as the hypertrophy and increased volatility of the financial sector, together with the reorientation of corporate governance around the principle of shareholder value maximisation—has important implications for the competitive strategies of the Big Tech companies, as well as who benefits from their economic power. Presenting quantitative findings on the corporate governance regimes of the Big Tech platforms, and drawing on insights from corporate law and heterodox economics, this chapter represents an attempt to integrate a financial capitalism perspective into the competition law analysis of digital markets.