Also available on Charlie's Angel: project.

Abstract

Economic Pressures vs. Social Benefit in Information Technology
An Exploration of Key Issues and Policy Hotspots

The rapid developments in information technology are engendering massive socio-economic change, not always in socially desirable ways. This project is an attempt to identify and investigate, from an economic perspective, key issues in the socially responsible application of information technologies. As such, the first task of the project is an understanding of the "social good." It seeks to identify ways of determining the "social good" in terms of developing information technologies, from social efficiency, to humanist approaches, to expert opinions on socially responsible economics in information technology. The focus of the project will be on the economic definition of social benefit (i.e. social efficiency), and key issues in the failures of markets including externalities, public goods, imperfect competition, and labor shortages will all be examined. Public policy "hotspots," areas where economic forces are producing sub-optimal social conditions, will be identified. Based on the criteria of the various approaches to determining the public good, public policy recommendations will be made in identified hotspots, and avenues for further research will be suggested.