The economic significance of infrastructural IT systems

Abstract

This paper develops a new framework for analysing how and why IT is being applied to the infrastructure of the ‘information economy’. The interaction of micro and macro aspects of IT provides an economic rationale for the IT community to go beyond questions of firms' operations and strategies and to look towards national and international economic change. The micro-economic roles of transactions, communication and information infrastructure are analysed. These are then considered in terms of IT-related policy, from the local to the international level, illustrated by property rights legislation and changes in the European economic environment. It is concluded that the significance of IT lies primarily in its role as the very means by which markets and other economic mechanisms operate.