How Digital Communication Technology Shapes Markets

This Palgrave Pivot explores how communication technology such as the Internet has changed the nature of trade, focusing especially on economy-wide reductions in company size (granularity) and the role of retailers (disintermediation). By increasing access to comparative data, influencing conceptions of time, and reducing the number of intermediaries between creator and consumer, technological connectivity is changing the very definition of competition. In the new network economy, disintermediation and granularity are turning cooperative information gathering and sharing into a vital market institution.
To exemplify the effects of communication technology, Bhatt focuses on two markets with particularly powerful effects on the economy: labor and education, and CIME (communication, information services, media, and entertainment). Mobile connectivity is radically changing the extent, capabilities, and operations of these markets, both in terms of the servicesthey provide and how they interact with consumers. Bhatt also explores how these benefits intersect with new concerns about privacy and security when the line between public and private information is becoming ever more fluid.

Argues that our basic understanding of markets must evolve in the face of new technology Describes how "competition," in a network economy, deviates from its traditional definition Explores how big data collection impacts human interaction

Autorentext

Swati Bhatt is Lecturer in Economics at Princeton University, USA. Her research interests include the economics of digitization and industrial organization in the technology industry.

Inhalt

1. The Technology: Has Digital Communication Technology Changed the Way Markets Function? Competition or Cooperation?.- 2. The Drivers: Connectivity, Data, and Attention.- 3. The Trends: Granularity, Behemoths, and Cooperation.- 4. The Independent Contractor and Entrepreneurship in Labor Markets.- 5. The On-Demand Economy and How We Live: Communication, Information, Media, and Entertainment.- 6. The Sharing Economy: Information Cascades, Network Effects, and Power Laws.- 7. The Private World of Sharing and Cooperation: Lines not Walls.- 8. The Internet and Regulation: Freedom Necessitates Oversight.- 9. The Conclusion: We Cooperate to Better Comprehend.