Global Electronic Commerce

Electronic commerce is changing the way businesses and consumers create, sell, and buy products, and the way they communicate and learn. How can policymakers position their countries to take advantage of this new environment? How should policymaking adjust to a more global, more networked, and more information-rich marketplace where relationships and jurisdictions between the governments, businesses, and citizens increasingly overlap? How can governments effectively harness rapidly changing technologies and partner with both domestic and foreign private sectors to reap the greatest benefits for their constituents?

This primer answers these questions using both general analysis and specific examples. It addresses in particular the needs of policymakers in emerging markets who must formulate and refine policies that affect e-commerce in areas such as telecommunications, finance, taxation, privacy, and international trade and domestic distribution. Companies considering doing business in these economies also will find that the examples offer insights into the issues that policymakers face, the different policy approaches they choose, and the market opportunities that arise as more and more economies around the world embrace global electronic commerce.

Catherine Mann was a senior fellow who is now the Chief Economist at the OECD, where she also heads up the Economics Directorate. She was most recently the Barbara '54 and Richard M. Rosenberg Professor of Global Finance at the International Business School, Brandeis University, where she also directed the Rosenberg Institute of Global Finance. She joins the OECD after 7 years at Brandeis and following 20-plus years in Washington, DC.

Sue E. Eckert served as assistant secretary of export administration in the Clinton Administration. At the Watson Institute, she co-directs the projects on Targeted Sanctions and Terrorist Financing and explores cybersecurity governance issues. Eckert and colleague Thomas Biersteker lead an international research consortium and database (Targeted Sanctions Consortium) of more than 50 scholars and practitioners located at institutions around the world examining the impacts and effectiveness of United Nations targeted sanctions. She works extensively with UN bodies to enhance instruments of collective security, having co-authored Targeted Financial Sanctions: A Manual for Design and Implementation, participated in the series of multilateral initiatives (the Interlaken, Bonn-Berlin, and Stockholm Processes), and organized workshops, simulations, and training for the Security Council and related groups.

Sarah Cleeland Knight is an assistant professor of international politics at American University's School of International Service.