Abstract
New media applications become vital in order to compete as a country and as human beings. Despite the positive impact and increasing global usage of new media applications, some countries have low new media applications penetration when others have high. This should be analyzed and evaluated within the countries' own macroeconomic and institutional dynamics. Dynamic motives as institutional, macroeconomic, infrastructural, and political factors heavily divined and also easily damage the current and future conditions of the countries. This work conceptually and concretely investigated the role of specific factors. Macroeconomic factors are determined as population, GDP growth rate, and population rate of the countries. Institutional factors are evaluated through political stability index, rule of law index, and civil liberties index of each sample country. Infrastructural factors, business environment, and investments were analyzed with looking at international internet bandwidth per internet users and competitiveness data for countries.
TopDescribing the character of new media applications as different economic goods is key for understanding the role of them in the economic and social lives. It is also important to find out the answer to the essential question: “Why do penetration rates of new media applications are less in some countries but more in others?”. If we understand the characteristics of classical economic goods, information goods and digital goods, it becomes easier to describe new media applications and its different character as economic goods in terms of their price, costs structure, barriers and externalities.
Fundamentals of economics start with the economic problem which is scarcity and choice. They originate from the economic systems that help to transform existing resources to goods and services in order to satisfy the needs and wants. The types of the resources that are used for transformation help to categorize the goods in the economy. But before explaining the categories of the goods, it should need to know that goods that have value, traded in the national/international/global markets and that have scarcity risks are economic goods1. In the literature of economics, consumers’ goods and producers’ goods are two main groups that can be called as classical goods. Consumers’ goods are the final goods that satisfy the needs and wants of the consumers directly. So they can be called as final goods in the economy. Producers’ goods are those used for the act of production. These type of goods are also called capital goods and semi-final goods.2
Key Terms in this Chapter
Penetration: Influence degree or impact factor of something.
Unemployment: One of the basic macroeconomic factors. It refers to number of people who are not active in a labor force and actively searching for employment.
GDP Growth Rate: It indicates how fast the economy is growing thanks to economic outputs.
Institutional Factors: Internal dynamics that reflects the governmental or non-governmental organizations efficiency of performances. They produce economic outcomes in the markets.
Competitiveness: Ability to provide facilities in an efficient way. It refers to sustainability, success and efficiency for economic agents.
Civil Liberties: A personal freedom of expression.
Infrastructure: Physical and organizational facilities in order to increase the social and economic utility.
Political Stability Index: Institutional indicator that shows the stability in political and governmental issues in the countries. It also includes political oriented violence.
Macroeconomic Factors: External economic dynamics that impact wide range of population rather than individuals.