Global technology companies with a large customer base are making their way into the payment system. New technology and new participants give rise to new challenges. International platforms gather substantial information about us as individuals, especially if they know our payment patterns. Such information should not fall into the wrong hands. We are living in an increasingly digital world. From the comfort of our sofas, we can now access an unprecedented array of music, film and literature. From a tablet or a mobile phone, we can order groceries or control the temperature in our holiday home. Artificial intelligence and robotisation are also in focus. By managing processes using machine learning, work can be made more efficient. But even if technology appears to be advancing more rapidly than ever before, there is little visible effect on productivity growth for the economy as a whole. Both in Norway and among our trading partners, productivity growth has declined (Chart 4). In recent years, growth has been around one percent. Chart 4 Productivity growth in Norway and abroad. GDP per hour worked.
Sources: European Commission, Thomson Reuters and Norges Bank  Technological advances have reduced the relative cost of capital goods. Tasks have been taken over by robots and other capital equipment. This probably explains some of the decline in the labour share.7 The emergence of global technology companies is also reducing the labour share. With broad platforms and vast numbers of users, they dominate the market, which translates into both market power and substantial profits. The winner takes all. A few technology companies stand out by virtue of their size (Chart 7). Alphabet is one example. 80 percent of the world’s web searches are done through its Google search engine.8 Another example is Amazon. In 2017, the company accounted for 44 percent of all US online retail sales. Chart 7 The world’s largest listed companies. Market capitalisation in billions of USD1) Apple Alphabet Microsoft Amazon Facebook Tencent Berkshire Hathaway JPMorgan ICBC Johnson&Johnson ExxonMobil Bank of America 0  100  200  300  400  500  600  700  800  1) Market capitalisation at 9 February 2018. Source: Bloomberg  The decline in the labour share can primarily be explained by the fundamental transformation of the global labour market in recent decades. More countries are participating in global trade, labour mobility has increased, and offshoring production 7 Hagelund, K., E. W. Nordbø and L. Sauvik (2017): “Lønnsandelen” [The labour share], Aktuell kommentar 9/2017, Norges Bank (Norwegian only). 8 Source: Financial Times, January 2018 (https://www.ft.com/content/95d16c88-f795-11e7-88f7-5465a6ce1a00). 7  to low-cost countries has become easier.