U.S. begins tracking e-commerce

The Commerce Department, hoping to keep from falling further behind the curve of technological changes transforming the economy, unveiled a new index to track e-commerce separately from its overall retail-sales figures.

The move, which many economists welcomed, is the government's first attempt to provide an indicator devoted solely to tracking the online boom. But some analysts warned that further refinements would be necessary to truly gauge the economic changes wrought by the Internet, many of which are fairly difficult to track. Story to follow. -- Yochi J. Dreazen, WSJ Interactive Edition