A New Economy? Created: 2000-01-01 Last Modified: 2000-01-01 Go to Brad DeLong's Home Page http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/

What Kind of an Historical Turning Point?

J. Bradford DeLong
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/
delong@econ.berkeley.edu

 

Four Observations

• First, I agree with Arthur and Castells.
  
  • Economies of scale and network externalities are key to understanding the future.
    
  • A network economy will be profoundly different from the large-scale organization economy that we have lived in for the past hundred years.
    
  • But the problem--and the source of my uncertainty and hesitancy--is the difficulty of specifying how and when.
    
  • So let me focus on the big tendencies, and try to turn them into shorter-range forecasts.
    
    
• Second, industry structure is going to change.
  
  • The potential breakdown of the Progressive-Era political-economic equilibrium.
    
    
• Third, intellectual property is going to be key.
  
  • But we don't know how to make an intellectual property system for the coming e-conomy.
    
    
• Fourth, asset values will.... fluctuate.
  
  • Inconsistent expectations dominate today's financial markets.

 

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