Our 21^st century reality of predominantly services-based economies and societies in all countries, advanced as well as developed, and of an ever globalizing “service economy” is not always properly understood.  The Applied Services Economic Centre (ASEC) was created in 1985 by the Geneva Association’s Founding Secretary-General, Orio Giarini, and conceived essentially as an “observatoire” - a lookout institution - which would scan, focus and report on emerging trends and issues affecting the services universe and the emerging “services economy”.  ASEC’s continuing purpose is to investigate those developments and trends which deserve greater attention in their own right, are of broad interest to the insurance industry worldwide, and then serve to stimulate interest and wide-ranging efforts by interested individuals and organisations.(more)

ASEC identifies and researches important cross-cutting themes and issues related to the development of the modern global service economy.  Over more than 20 years now, ASEC has served to draw attention to a continuing series of emerging services-related trends and issues and contribute to their evolution: the changing role and function of services, liberalisation of trade in services, implications for work and welfare, and the link between services and vulnerability, etc. (more)

ASEC’s current Services and Vulnerability Project focuses on the evolving concept of vulnerability – how it differs from related notions of uncertainty/certainty, risk, and hazard – and how vulnerability analysis and assessment can be applied to many of events/outcomes which affect our 21^st Century global service economy. You can get more information specifically about the ASEC Services and Vulnerability Project here.