Technological and Institutional Innovations in the Service Sector

Abstract

A structural transformation has been underway over several decades in the industrialized affluent economies. The provision of services has replaced the production of goods as the predominant economic activity. The emerging picture of the economies is not so much one of factories as of a society engaged in the production and consumption of services — a society of learning, of travelling, of legal and business consultancies, of dining, of dental visits and of data transmission.