"Digital Economy 2000".

• Author: GREIFER, NICHOLAS
• Position: Department of Commerce releases report on information technology sector - Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, June 2000. (84 pp)

The Commerce Department's third annual report on the sector of the economy devoted to information technology (IT) shows mostly goods news. First, the IT sector accounts for half or more of the recent acceleration in U.S. productivity growth from 1.4 percent per year during 1973-1995, to 2.8 percent since 1995. This has helped keep inflation at bay, during a period of remarkably low unemployment. Whereas in past business cycles, low unemployment has triggered inflation. Moreover, the drop in IT prices of goods such as computers has directly lowered inflation by an average 0.5 percentage points. Second, despite the outsized impact, the IT sector is still a small part of the economy. IT industries share of the...