The information age technology revolution promises enormous benefits to the U.S. and global economies. Yet if those benefits are to be fully realized, policymakers in the U.S. and abroad must rethink some fundamental premises about how economic activity has traditionally been governed. Should we continue to regulate industries the way we have in the past? Does the digital age require a new approach to antitrust enforcement? To best facilitate global electronic commerce, what changes are needed in intellectual property law, professional licensing requirements, laws governing privacy and content, and policies relating to standards? And what steps, if any, are required to best ensure that all citizens have access to the new technologies? This book examines these and other policy issues. It draws on a spring 1997 conference sponsored by the Brookings Institution and the Cato Institute where leading experts in various fields related to information technology presented their views. Copublished with the Cato Institute
Authors
Robert E. Litan is a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution and vice president for research and policy at the Kauffman Foundation. Among his many books is Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity (Yale University Press, 2007), written with William J. Baumol and Carl J. Schramm. William A. Niskanen, chairman of the Cato Institute and long-time editor of Regulation magazine, served on President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers, as director of economics at the Ford Motor company, and as assistant director of the Office of Management and Budget.