From the Book - Regular Print
A kaleidoscopic approach 3 --
1 A social construct and an analytical challenge 5 --
American economy in the 1990s was no longer the same as that in the 1960s 5 --
Combining micro- and macroeconomics, history and geography 8 --
Difficulty of analysing structural changes in real time 9 --
2 Microeconomic instability and an uncertain organizational model 14 --
Digitalized information and redundant networks 14 --
Three figures of the 'new economy' 17 --
Search for an organizational model for the 'new economy' 19 --
3 A growth regime driven by information and communications technology? 26 --
New and the old economies: a conjunction of two virtuous circles? 26 --
Solow paradox has not been entirely resolved yet 28 --
Faster potential growth: problems with forecasting 33 --
The 'new economy' has had different effects on different sectors 36 --
4 Genealogy of the 'new economy': the institutional change at the heart of the US trajectory 44 --
1973-2000: the long search for successors to the Fordist growth regime 44 --
An early deregulation of the product market 51 --
Increasingly competitive labour markets 53 --
ICT as a way of overcoming management problems in large companies 55 --
A new architecture for economic policy 58 --
Multiform financial innovations 60 --
Internationalization underpinned internal US dynamics 62 --
Should other countries adopt the institutional architecture of the USA? 63 --
5 Geography of the 'new economy': the diversity of institutional architectures 65 --
ICT at the heart of the technological change process 65 --
Pre-conditions for virtuous growth: two configurations 68 --
Was the US configuration exemplary or just singular? 70 --
Three institutional configurations 71 --
Is it necessary to produce ICT in order to know how to use them? 73 --
6 2000-2002: reassessing the potential of ICT-driven growth 77 --
Internet bubble: from boom to burst 77 --
Traders and economists forget the lessons of history at their own peril 86 --
Consecutive technological paradigms do not resemble one another 90 --
7 Long-term historical outlook after the Internet bubble 101 --
Overestimating ICT's role 101 --
End of three major myths 105 --
Inequalities within and between countries: down with technological determinism 107 --
An uncertain mode of regulation 109 --
Opposition between the old and the new economy is obsolete 115 --
8 Emergence of an anthropogenetic model 120 --
ICT as the vector of real-time management? 120 --
Moving towards a network economy? 124 --
Transition towards a knowledge economy? 128 --
In the long run: an anthropogenetic model 136 --
Future lasts for a long time 145 --
Behind the success of the 'new economy': a crisis already in the making 145 --
Multiform institutional changes rather than technological determinism 147 --
Geography of the 'new economy' actually includes the Nordic countries 147 --
ICT is already a mature industry 148 --
Power of Wall Street instead of Silicon Valley 149 --
Altered competition but no return to mythical competitive markets 150 --
Between speculation and utopia: the anthropogenetic model 151.
