How The Information Revolution Remade Business And The Economy

Tremendous technological progress in the last half century has exponentially grown productivity as well as increased automation to reduce the costs of operation for businesses. On one hand, ever-growing productivity has reduced requirements for manual labor through automation. But, on other hand, huge unemployment created from reduction of workforce due to automaÂtion, has reduced the consumer purchasing power and is indirectly hurting the Return on Investments (RoI). This brings any further progress of technology to a standstill. For technology to progress both supply and demand have to grow. The supply comes from producÂtivity of workforce and demand comes from their wages. Hence, free markets must ensure that wages automatically catch up with ever-growing productivity, with minimal government inÂtervention. To avoid automation from destroying jobs in an economy, free markets should ensure that working hours of workforce be reduced during the waning phase of economy and increased during its waxing phase.

Why do we find ourselves living in an Information Society? How did the collection, processing, and communication of information come to play an increasingly important role in advanced industrial countries relative to the roles of matter and energy? And why is this change recent--or is it? James Beniger traces the origin of the Information Society to major economic and business crises of the past century. In the United States, applications of steam power in the early 1800s brought a dramatic rise in the speed, volume, and complexity of industrial processes, making them difficult to control. Scores of problems arose: fatal train wrecks, misplacement of freight cars for months at a time, loss of shipments, inability to maintain high rates of inventory turnover. Inevitably the Industrial Revolution, with its ballooning use of energy to drive material processes, required a corresponding growth in the exploitation of information: the Control Revolution. Between the 1840s and the 1920s came most of the important information-processing and communication technologies still in use today: telegraphy, modern bureaucracy. rotary power printing, the postage stamp, paper money, typewriter, telephone, punch-card processing, motion pictures, radio, and television. Beniger shows that more recent developments in microprocessors, computers, and telecommunications are only a smooth continuation of this Control Revolution. Along the way he touches on many fascinating topics: why breakfast was invented, how trademarks came to be worth more than the companies that own them, why some employees wear uniforms, and whether time zones will always be necessary. The book is impressive not only for the breadth of its scholarship but also for the subtlety and force of its argument. It will be welcomed by sociologists, economists, historians of science and technology, and all curious in general.

Economic Renaissance in the Age of Artificial Intelligence explores a wide range of new approaches to the economic, social, legal, scientific, technological, financial, architectural, environmental, and humanistic challenges that humanity will face due to increased automation. Marshall Goldsmith wrote in his book, What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There, that people rely on their past experience to address new challenges. The limitation with this approach is that these new challenges often arise from different contexts and may not be susceptible to traditional approaches. In the coming era of artificial intelligence (AI), expanded use of robots, and increased trans-national commerce, humanity will face monumental challenges that will differ from those we have faced in the past, including how to avoid mass unemployment due to rapid growth of automation. In order to survive and thrive in this new era, we will have to think and act differently, so that new ideas can solve not only the problems of the present but also of the near and distant future. Economic Renaissance in the Age of Artificial Intelligence explores a wide range of new approaches to the economic, social, legal, scientific, technological, financial, architectural, environmental, and humanistic challenges that humanity will face due to increased automation. The new methods and approaches outlined by the various experts in this book will help inform and inspire humanity to create a more balanced world in which science, economics, and the environment can thrive for years to come.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a deep recession started in the United States in December 2007 and ended in June 2009. However, most people recognize that even though the recession was said to be over, its after-effects lingered well into the next decade, and even in 2017, some ten years later, governments in America and around the world were struggling with problems of low growth, wage stagnation and high poverty. Most economists were caught off guard, and they began to look for new ideas that may be appropriately called NEW MACROECONOMICS. This book examines conventional economics in the context of recent developments. It shows that a new theory, known as the wage-productivity model, explains almost every macro-economic experience of the global economy since 1980. You have to read this theory to believe it. This theory will turn out to be more important than the Keynesian revolution.

Let's learn about money! Money is a market phenomenon. It originated as a spontaneous social institution, and its use is still inextricably tied to market exchange. Therefore, the analysis of money occurs in a market setting. Use of monetary systems and a market setting as the underlying parameters ideally positions the reader to examine money in its various uses: as a medium of exchange, in credit markets, and as an instrument of monetary policy. Professor Gerdes believes that the study of money should commence at the most general level. Consequently, this book is anchored in the context of monetary systems (commodity, fiduciary, and fiat monies). This gives readers a very broad perspective-helping readers understand, for example, how the money used today differs from money used in the past, or how current money relates to money discovered by anthropologists in isolated subcultures. This book is perfect for courses in traditional money and banking courses, as well as undergraduate courses in monetary theory as well as sourcebook on money for business professionals.

Today’s news media displays an intense fascination with the global economy—and for good reason. The degree of worldwide economic integration is unprecedented. Rising globalization has lifted living standards and reduced poverty, while foreign markets and new technologies continue to present opportunities for entrepreneurs and corporations. Still, economic shocks can spread across the world in minutes, impacting billions of lives. The political framework supporting globalization is now under scrutiny, and recent elections suggest economic policies may be readjusted in the coming years. This book will help you learn about economics in everyday language, using little or no math, giving you better tools to interpret current events as well as long-term economic and political developments. Modern economics offers a powerful framework for understanding globalization, international trade, and economic growth. You may possess years of hands-on experience dealing with business cycles and foreign competitive pressures, but lack a solid grounding in economic concepts that shed light on the forces of globalization. This book is here to help.

The cost benefit technique is so often referenced in government policy that a correct understanding is necessary for officials entrusted with public decisions. This book presents essential elements for understanding, interpreting, and conducting cost benefit analysis (CBA) in the context of local government. If you’re charged with preparing numerical analyses to assess the worthiness of a specific policy proposal, you’ll need this book to understand how costs and benefits are identified and analyzed in terms of economic efficiency and resource allocation. CBA is rooted in and has little or no value apart from the economic concepts of cost and resource efficiency. This book is designed to teach the correct use and interpretation of cost benefit analysis, while advising you of CBA’s limitations and pitfalls. Case studies, presented in the final chapters of this book, represent typical proposals confronted by local officials. The book also includes instructions for using computer spreadsheets to build basic cost benefit models and an appendix on the step-by-step process of discounting future costs and benefits.

We attempt to sensitize the business practitioner and the public-policy planner, as well as students of business management and the social sciences, to the concept of sustainable development in an easily comprehensible manner. This book analyzes sustainable development from the perspective of economics. Environmental and social challenges are shaping policies and consumer preferences to facilitate sustainable development. This concept has become an integral part of global business strategy. However, these trends are not always backed up by an adequate understanding of the complexities of the concept, and their implications for decision-making. It is important to appreciate the economic logic underlying both the necessity and the difficulty of moving to a world that can be sustained over time. The inter-relationship between the activities of human societies and nature lies at the core of sustainable development. Understanding this inter-relationship goes beyond the domain of conventional economics, into more interfaced terrains of ecological economics and environmental science.

This volume deals with advanced topics and specific problems in applied econometrics. Part III introduces advanced topics in econometric theory and contains three chapters. Chapter 7 deals with modeling issues and some phenomena that occur when the dataset you have collected has certain problems that need special attention for your results to be reliable. Chapter 8 analyzes the concepts and models that are not linear in their forms. Chapter 9 introduces several interesting models in advanced time-series techniques when a dataset is not stationary. Part IV applies the theoretical concepts learned in the previous chapters into empirical research. This part also consists of three chapters. Chapter 10 discusses the problem of selection bias and correcting methods. Chapter 11 introduces the regression discontinuity design and differences-in-differences models. Chapter 12 presents steps to carry out an empirical research project and provides strategies to avoid pitfalls in applied econometrics.

Excerpt from An Economic Study of the Information Technology Revolution Integration. As the automated office functions and automated physical production systems within firms become integrated and networked, there is a reversal in the trend to separate out the information management tasks from the remainder of the economy. Information systems link customers to suppliers and offices to factories. In the consequent reintegration of economic activity, information technology plays a more central role in the strategy of businesses and the performance of the economy. It is a popular conception that the primary driving force behind this information revolution has been progress in microelectronic technology, and more particularly in the development of integrated circuits or chips. On this view, the reason why computing power which used to fill a room and cost now stands on a desk and costs $5000, or why pocket calculators which used to cost $1000 now cost $10, is that society happens to have benefitted from a series of spectacularly successful inventions in the field of electronics. As to why the introduction of information technology occurred when it did or took the path that it did why data processing came before word processing, or why computers transformed the office environment before they transformed the factory environment the popular conception is silent. And, since this technology-oriented view of the causes behind the information revolution offers little guidance as to the direction which technological developments have taken thus far, it offers little insight into the direction which they will take in the future. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.