Information economics: research strategies

Reviews past and present research into the role of information as a public good and states that progress in thinking has not kept pace with events that led the New York Times to label the 1980s as “when information accelerated”. Argues that a new perspective on the role of information in the changing extent and pattern of economic growth might be achieved by combining several elements from recent analytical efforts including information as a factor of production, a taxonomy of information, and a broader conceptualization of infrastructure so that it includes institutions and has a focus on competence, both individual and in the learning organization. Warns of a resurgence of Luddism, fuelled by unemployment, in the form of an anti‐change stance which questions whether so much growing inequality is needed to achieve the magical productivity said to give everyone bigger incomes and a better life.