EVA scenarios: West rises, Asia wins, crisis drags on, or everything collapses

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Will the United States and the economically significant OECD countries rise rapidly from the economic crisis? Or will Asia recover under China’s leadership faster than the West? Will the crisis drag on, and will it lead to a battle among the various economic zones? Or will the global economic system collapse? How should Finland act in the coming years?
     Clear guidelines are not easy to put forward. However, the Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA names four alternative scenarios on Thursday on how the world might develop by 2020.
     
The starting point is the present economic crisis, whose duration and effects can only be guessed at.
     Already last summer, EVA saw the crisis as growing to become such a big shock that options for handling it would need to be considered in Finland as well.
     “These are tools with whose help it is possible to consider outlined alternatives for the future”, emphasised EVA director Risto E.J. Penttilä, describing the “playing fields of the future”. He nevertheless feels that it is likely that one of these models, or at least a combination of them, will be occur.
     
EVA targets its message toward various communities. Penttilä hopes that corporations would ponder what the different future options would mean to customer relationships. Also worth consideration is the need for labour, and the question of education and training.
      A large group of experts at EVA have prepared the scenarios over a period of nine months. The main partners represented were the Finnish Confederation of Salaried Employees (STTK), the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (TEKES), The Finnish Innovation Fund (SITRA), and eight companies, Componenta, F-Secure, Fortum, Kone, Metso, Rautaruukki, UPM-Kymmene and Wärtsilä.
     
The “West sheds its skin” model is the favourite of EVA and Penttilä. In it, the Western countries rise quickly from the economic crisis with a minimum of grief under the leadership of the United States. “This is this kind of Obama scenario, in which Obama loves us and we love Obama”, Penttilä said.
     The top option is a kind of improved version of the market economy. A combination of work and free time are seen as a way to attract skilled people to Finland.
     The model of “Chinese capitalism” might be of special interest to large Finnish companies that have already set up shop in Asia.
     The “battle of the blocks” model assumes that everyone will be doing worse than now because of the failures of free trade. The model might be pleasing for some. “There is a nostalgic feeling in moving backwards in time”, Penttilä points out.
     The last model, “Stimulus and collapse”, is the most difficult one to find any positive features in. “Perhaps the emphasis on values is significant - growing potatoes at the summer cabin”, Penttilä says, referring to the phenomenon of downshifting, where people seek happiness in moving to a job that pays less, for instance.
     For all citizens EVA offers four stories in Pelin henki (“The Spirit of the Game”), a book by Juha Itkonen, in which he blows life into the EVA scenarios in a somewhat humorous manner.


Links:
  Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA

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