For many observers the beginning of a dynamic economic and stock market upswing in the U.S. in the mid 1990s marked the start of a new era, the times of the new economy. This phenomenon has been under intense discussion ever since - both in the political arena as well as among scientists....

The notion of new economy was coined in the United States when there was increasing evidence that, as a result of the introduction of new technologies, the traditional behavior of macroeconomic variables might have changed. The expansion of the 1990s differed from its predecessors in three...