UNDERSTANDING THE "NEW ECONOMY"

The New Economy is not different from the old one: both of them aim at increasing output. The two concepts are rather different one from another taking into account their relations with ICT, considered General Purpose Technology. ICT represent the engine of increasing in the 90's in almost all developed economies, especially the one of the USA. Thus, ICT approaches the way of increasing Productivity: technological substitution and change. This paper shows that although the substitution offers a good explanation of investments boom in ICT in the 90's, it ignores the endogen potential of productivity increase and turns the technological factor or Total Factor Productivity (TFP) more or less the expression of the aggregation and the indexation errors. On the contrary, the technological change offers a better explanation of the technological factor. as technological level or progress. ICT supports both positions, but the latter one seems to be better satisfied.