Los cambios en la estructura económica en las colinas del silicio, 1990-1999

Abstract

Since the late 1990s, arguments have often been made about the emergence of a digital economy in the U.S. at the national level, and yet little is known on how the digital economy is manifested at the regional or metropolitan level. This paper presents an empirical study on the dynamics of the economic structure in the Austin metropolitan statistical area (Austin MSA), Texas, during the 1990s using input-output (IO) analysis. Based on the analysis on both three- and seven-segment IO models, the study shows clearly that the new economic sectors such as information and communication technology (ICT) grew quickly with the concomitant decline in the traditional sectors such as production and energy in the Austin’s economy. This empirical study finds: 1) the digital economy emerged in the Austin MSA in the 1990s, 2) the generation of information products became less dependent on the inputs from the production and energy segments, and the production and energy segments became increasingly dependent on the input of the information segment, 3) the trend of economic structure transformation of the Austin economy calls for a further investigation of the environmental impacts of the digital economy in the information age.