Multilateral Responses to E-Commerce :: essays research papers

The Issues to contents list The advent of the new economy has already produced a sizable body of literature. This paper does not attempt to discuss all the issues involved in the new economy, but aims to extract the implications for the international regulatory framework and to provide guidelines for necessary changes. It will thereby focus on the establishment of standards, on policy co-ordination and on taxation. The new economy is sometimes seen as the herald for a truly borderless world. However, since the internet requires substantial prerequisites concerning technical infrastructure and human capital, some worry that the developing countries will be left behind. The paper addresses this fear of a growing "technological apartheid" between the industrialized and the developing countries and looks at policies to overcome the digital divide. The structure of the paper is as follows: The paper first clarifies the various catchwords of the new economy, examines the rapid growth of e–commerce and looks at the digital divide between countries. It then discusses the necessary modifications for the multilateral framework concerning the establishment of standards, the need as well as the scope for policy coordination, taxation and the overall treatment of e-commerce. Finally, the paper looks at strategies to tackle the digital gap between countries. 1.1 Catchwords and Concepts for the New Economyto contents list Various catchwords have been coined to capture the essence of the economy- wide consequences resulting from an increased use of processed digital information and from the application of the internet for a wide array of services (software programming, webpage maintenance, ticket and hotel reservations, on-line information and support, ordering facilities, publishing, indexing or abstracting etc.) as well as transactions (delivering music, movies, documents, literature or software in digital form).(1) The following catchwords aim at different characteristics of this phenomenon but are frequently used as synonyms: "digital economy", "information economy", "knowledge-based economy", "weightless economy", "virtual economy", "internet economy", "electronic commerce", "e-commerce", "e-conomy", or maybe more capacious "new economy". Some authors have tried to assign distinguishing concepts to this variety. For example, Kling and Lamb (2000) suggest to use the term "information economy" to include all informational goods and services like publishing, research, legal and insurance services, entertaining, and teaching in all of its forms, and the term "digital economy" to address (only) the goods and services whose development, production, sale, or provision is critically dependent upon digital technologies. Furthermore, the term "new economy" is associated for them to possible consequences of the information economy and the digital economy, namely high growth, low inflation, and low unemployment.