Classroom Companion: Business

Internet economy comprises the economics of Internet goods and services. 
Since most of the economic activity within the context of digital economics is 
performed over the Internet, Internet economy is close in scope to digital eco-
nomics. One important digital market that is excluded in the Internet economy 
is the economics of telecommunications, that is, the market for broadcast, 
Internet, and mobile and fixed network services.
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Attention economy is related to the value created by people’s attention. User atten-
tion is an important element in many digital business models. The basis for the 
attention economy is that data has become abundant, while people’s attention- span 
remains a scarce resource. There are business models that exploit people’s attention-
span to generate revenue; the most well-known are those based on advertisements.
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Sharing economy is the economy in which people or organizations share goods 
and services such as Airbnb and Uber. The sharing economy has also been 
termed access economy, peer-economy, collaborative economy, and crowdsourc-
ing capitalism.
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Abundance economy is the economy of goods and services that are abundant; 
that is, they are close to unlimited in supply. Many digital services exhibit abun-
dance features, since they can be copied with zero marginal cost. This chal-
lenges one of the most fundamental assumptions in neo-classical economics, 
namely, that resources are scarce. In several digital economies they are not!
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Digital economics, as defined in this book, encompasses all or parts of the terms 
explained above. It is important to point out that digital economics is a young aca-
demic field of study. New terms appears, and definitions of existing terms are revised 
as researchers gain increased understanding of the field and as new technologies 
expand the boundaries of the digital economy and enable new business opportunities.