Without a doubt, the coronavirus pandemic will never be forgotten thanks to all the difficulties and challenges it has caused humanity and the world economy. However, the quarantines or lockdowns, which had been effectively implemented before a proper anti-pandemic road map was determined and the vaccination campaign became widespread, caused a radical debate on the established economic order. The very questioning is based on the mechanical, inhumane and over-industrialized aspect of the current version of capitalism.
For this reason, although the global economy and trade struggles to get rid of pandemic fallouts, the leading international economic institutions, think tanks and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are seriously considering a new version of capitalism. The new capitalism is based on a society-first approach; justice among economic stakeholders. It is related to technological transformation and the green revolution as well. The very new capitalism, in this respect, points to a brand-new value production process that will leave behind the neo-liberal orthodox understanding and economic policies that do not prioritize society. The new understanding aims to create an innovative design process that prioritizes people's quality of life.
The search for a new capitalism is an issue embraced by the economies of the Atlantic belt, where they experienced the first version between 1820 and 1929 and the second version between 1980 and 2008, and by the emerging economies stretching from Latin America to Africa and Asia. Capitalism, if it is to continue to mark the 21st century, needs to prioritize inclusiveness and sustainability. A capitalism that ignores the inequality of income distribution among the economic stakeholders that produce added value will now be the forerunner of a bigger disaster for national economies. This is why new emerging economies, especially in Africa, are now looking for new partners and strategic collaborations based on the win-win principle.
Important economists in the field define this new understanding of capitalism as "conscious capitalism." This means that the leading economies would have more empathy toward emerging economies. The same is true for managers who have more empathy toward the employees of their own company or factory. The conscious capitalism prioritizes placing industrialization on a new platform based on zero waste, green energy and fair income distribution. We are talking about a new capitalism that prioritizes employment.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens. The evaluation jury of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences gave the award to these three important names as they enabled the development of a new understanding of the labor market. This showed what kind of conclusions can be drawn from natural experiments in terms of cause-and-effect relationships. Their approaches spread to other fields and radically changed empirical research. The concept of conscious capitalism will appear more frequently in the coming period.
