Of course, public capital comprises not only material infrastructure − such as transport, telecommunications and energy networks − but also the body of knowledge and skills available to an economy. These two types of infrastructure, material and immaterial, share some of the characteristics of public goods, and without government intervention they would be available in insufficient quantity.
There are various reasons behind such strong linkages between recent information technologies and financial services. First, finance is a sophisticated system of various information processing such as payment, settlement, investment decisions, and risk management. In this respect, the financial industry can be considered an "information industry."