The data analysis of the current state of the digital economy
The analysis for the EU will cover all DESI digital sub-indicators (Broadband Connectivity, Human Capital, Use of Internet, Integration of Digital Technology, and Digital Public Services) during the period 2015-2020, but also complementary data from EIBIS, ITU, and the World Bank. A comparison between pre- and post-COVID-19 period as well as relative to other developed economies such as the US will be performed. We will exploit both the time series dimension of DESI data as well as the cross-sectional nature across EU-27 countries to determine the dynamics and directions of observed changes. So far, DESI index was not calculated for Montenegro but there is an effort to include the country to this dataset. Furthermore, the β-convergence approach (Barro, R. J., & Sala-i-Martin, X. (1992). Convergence. Journal of Political Economy, 100(2), 223–251. https://doi.org/10.1086/261816) will be applied to identify the convergence paths (or divergence) of various digital indicators across the EU countries. The researchers will effort to carry out comparable analysis for selected Southeast Asian countries and to construct the DESI index for these countries (data limitations allowing). Then, they will compare the results across Southeast Asian countries and European countries and formulate findings, which will create the basis for the first batch of papers. This analysis will provide an indication of the relative state of the digitalization in these regions.