Traditional macroeconomic methods and existing economic indicators may not apply to and cannot keep pacewith the information economy’s Internet speed, expanding markets, and changing industry structure. This'Research in Progress' paper will first describe and characterize new capabilities that are being developed tomeasure, monitor, and forecast business activity within the emerging Internet-based economy at the global,country, industry segment, and individual company level. Based on these new measurement and monitoringcapabilities, the paper will next describe two of the several new classes of indicators that are being developedand will be tested and validated in the latter stages of the research. The classes of indicators are: Indices forthe Digital Economy and Leading Indicators of Corporate Business Activity. Potential uses of these indicatorswill also be described. Although not available at the time of the writing of this paper, research results may befar enough along by the date of the PTC2000 conference to demonstrate the applicability of the newindicators using real data from electronic commerce activity in several Asia-Pacific countries and the US.
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