Abstract
The term “informatisation” was coined in the sociological literature to represent the developments towards the information society or knowledge based economy. This paper determines, on the basis of a set of informatisation indicators, the extent to which the European Union (EU) countries advanced towards the information society (vis-à-vis USA and Japan) over the period leading to the single market and identifies specific clusters among the EU economies that may be distinguished as homogeneous sub-groupings. We have sought to highlight the spatial “two-tier” nature of the information society and the regional (centre-pheriphery) disparity among the EU economies, revealing the factors, other than economic, which also contributed to the North-South divide pervading the EU.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publication status | Published - 1999 |
Bibliographical note
Paper presented at the Business and Economic Society International Conference, 22-26 July, 1999, Las Palmas.Keywords
- informatisation
- information society
- European Union
- cluster analysis
