Paul Krugman quotes you in the current Foreign Affairs saying:
"So what, then, *is* new about our post-industrial economy? What is new is that for the first time since the invention of printing, information processing and distribution has become one of the leading sectors.... Our leading sectors are changing the conditions of life of those who use information to direct enterprises - managers - and they are also changing the conditions of life of those who use information to decide what to buy - consumers. Perhaps most of interest, however, society's information processors and distributors include its intellectuals.
So we intellectuals are, quite naturally, incredibly excited. And we are very, very articulate."
A coupla things. You are a fine exception, but most of your colleagues in economics what I'd call articulate. But, that aside, "information" in this little passage is a pretty spongy concept. Information, in common usage, includes electronic capital and income flows, patents and other forms of IP, the managerial power to direct others, etc. Doesn't a whole lot of this get lost in the bland word "information"? Gold movements in the 19th century had the same effect as digital capital flows today, but no one called it info then.
In the same issue, Jagdish Bhagwati takes you to task on the issue of capital flows:
"So now we have all the benefits of free flows of international capital. Those benefits are mammoth: the ability to borrow abroad kept the Reagan deficits from crushing U.S. growth like an egg, and the ability to borrow from abroad has enabled successful emerging market economies to double or triple the speed at which their productivity levels and living standards converge to the industrial core."
Bhagwati says that this sort of "banner-waving" ignores the "crisis-prone downside" of K flows, and fails to notice that the actual gains are negligible. (Maybe it would have been good if the U.S. had problems financing the Reagan deficits, too.) How do you plead?
Doug