EM Editorial

Full-scale electronic trading systems were fora long time considered to be expensive in implementation as well as operation and restricted to certain application areas, such as flight reservation and financial stock exchange. The implications of electronic commerce described by researchers were not realized intersectorally or for the whole economy. Times have changed now. Global value-added networks, cheap personal computers, advanced data communication facilities, international standardization, and flexible client/server-based information systems will provide a new technological infrastmc&re permitting the quick and inexpensive reallsation of concepts developed back in the early eighties. The spreading of electronic commerce has been greatly fueled by those infrastructures and looking at companies on the World Wide Web, for example, highl@hts the 1985-argument of Millar/Porterthat IT affects all information associated with products. Our first article reflects the fact that the new infrastmctural revolution is indeed being recognized by many decision-makers in companies andgovemments. The various efforts made to realize National Information Infrastructures (NII) and the Global lnformation Infrastructure (GII) are prominent and currently broadly discussed examples of these developments. We hope you will find this issue of EM-Electronic Markets interesting and rewarding.