On the geography of the new economy: perspectives from the United States

The phrase ‘new economy’ has recently become embraced by the federal statistical establishment in the United States. The rise in productivity levels in the US economy in the 1990s has been increasingly associated with particular industries and types of capital goods, which have been found to enhance the overall productivity of the national economy. This paper documents the regional distribution of industries considered to be critical in this new phase in US economic history. The federal statistical agencies have identified key sectors associated with this change in the national trajectory of production, and information-technology-related sectors are at the core of these definitions. In particular, IT-producing and IT-using industries are viewed as critical to the development of the new economy. This analysis finds the IT-producing industries are more unevenly distributed than the IT-using industries. Over the 1990–1997 time period, the IT-producing industries became more unevenly distributed, while IT-using industries exhibited a pattern of in-fill, growing more rapidly in regions with weak concentration of these industries in 1990.