Hausmann, R, Hidalgo, C, Bustos, S, Corsica, M, Chung, S, Jimenez, J, Simoes, A and Yildirim, M A (2011), “The Atlas of Economic Complexity: Mapping Paths to Prosperity”, MIT Media Lab and Harvard University. International Organization for Standardization (2001), “Securities and related financial instruments – Classification of Financial Instruments (CFI code).” International Swaps and Derivatives Association (2012), “OTC Taxonomies and UPI”, available at http://www2.isda.org/otc-taxonomies-and-upi/. Jenner and Block (2011), “Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Chapter 11 Proceedings Examiner’s Report”. Jorgenson, D W, Ho, M and Samuels, J (2010), “New Data on US Growth by Industry”, World Klems Conference, Harvard University, August. Lee, H L, Padmanabhan, V and Whang, S (1997), “Information Distortion in a Supply Chain: The Bull Whip Effect”, Management Science, 43, 1997b, 546–58, April. McLaren, N and Shanbhogue, R (2011), “Using internet search data as economic indicators”, Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin, available at http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/qb110206.pdf. Office of Financial Research (2010), “Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) – Timeline of Major Events”, available at http://www.treasury.gov/press-center/pressreleases/Documents/081211%20LEI%20Major%20Timeline%20of%20Events.pdf  16  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Oh, C H, Selmier, W T and Lien, D (2011) “International trade, foreign direct investment, and transaction costs in language”, Journal of Socio-Economics, Volume 40, Issue 6, December, pages 732–735. Reinsdorf, M and Yuskavage, R (2010), “Exact Industry Contributions to Labor Productivity Change”, Chapter 5 in Diewert, W, Balk, B, Fixler D, Fox, K and Nakamura, A, “Price and Productivity Measurement: Volume 6, Index Number Theory”, Trafford Press. Saltoglu, B and Yenilmez, T (2011), “Analysing Systemic Risk with Financial Networks During a Financial Crash”, mimeo.

In 1979, Compuserve opened up electronic mail to a rising community of personal computer users. In the same year, two graduate students at Duke University, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, developed Usenet, allowing users to post messages to (a precursor of) internet forums. By 1983, after more than a decade of evolutionary development, a universal Internet Protocol was agreed. This provided infrastructure and common technical standards for this evolving communications network. But the languages of the internet remained technical and diffuse. That meant it largely remained the domain of the nerds – libraries and universities. In March 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, a British software engineer working at CERN, the Geneva-based nuclear research lab, wrote a memo to his boss Mike Sendall.7 It was a suggestion for improving information management at CERN, replacing the silo-ed approach to information storage and search with a more interconnected approach. Sendall described the proposal as “vague but exciting”. A year on, Berners-Lee made his proposal less vague and more exciting. A paper with Robert Cailliau proposed the development of a World Wide Web, with links between and within documents creating a web-like information network.8 At the centre of this web was a  6  World Trade Organisation (2011). 7  Berners-Lee (1989). 8  Berners-Lee and Cailliau (1990). BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  common language – Hyper-Text Markup Language (HTML). This was a new lingua franca for computers, allowing them to communicate irrespective of their operating systems and underlying technologies.