ABSTRACT
As the twenty-first century opens, the global economy is caught in the throes of several major forces that together promise to transform its very foundation, operation, and impact. The first force is the information technology (IT) revolution. In its North American heartland, and increasingly in Europe and Japan, the adoption of new, internet-based systems and an infrastructure based on high-speed connections, fibre optics, and wireless networks is creating entire new industries, revitalising old ones, and changing the way businesses and consumers act throughout the economy. Fuelled by rapidly rising investments in the new technologies and companies based on them, this ‘new economy’ is bringing major increases in productivity, entrepreneurship, and consumer choice. Together these offer the prospect of sustained, noninflationary growth at a level never previously achieved.
