As economic activity has become more information-intensive and ideas about the information society have been canvassed widely, information technology has overshadowed thinking about the role of communication and information. In the advanced economies investment in information-handling equipment has grown rapidly in importance and almost throughout the world telecommunications facilities are advocated as the leading edge of development.This wide-ranging collection charts the responses of the economics discipline to these changes, initially slowly but with gathering pace, as communication and information have moved from the sidelines to centre stage. This book will be an indispensible reference source by all those in the economics community, those interested in information science, library studies and communication.

The economics of language remains neglected territory. Language makes information operational. As a social technology, it is a resource of the symbolic species - some argue it defines the human species. Language affects ability to find employment; cultural identity, effective communication in business, international trade, and tourism; negotiations and settlement procedures; political activity; and conflict within and between nations. Donald Lamberton, a leading scholar in the field, has selected key papers which address issues such as why some languages survive and others do not, the importance of language to the operation of a world-wide business, the problem of the language divide in economic development and the future of new language technologies such as telephone interpreting services, the internet and talking machines. This authoritative collection of papers contributes, in the words of Jacob Marschak, to 'the essential stuff of economics, in particular the economics of uncertainty that characterizes problems of human information, communication and organization'.