Economic Measurement in Digital Age

This paper describes the United States Census Bureau's e-business measurement program. The paper discusses our measurement framework and associated definitions, our measurement strategy, the ambitious measurement program now underway, initial results, and future plans requiring additional funding. The paper concludes with a summary of lessons learned.

Technology in Society, 2018

This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details.

Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2017

A key economic indicator is real output. To get this right, we need to measure accurately both the value of nominal GDP (done by Bureau of Economic Analaysis) and key price indexes (done mostly by Bureau of Labor Statisticcs). All of us have worked on these measurements while at the BLS and the BEA. In this article, we explore some of the thorny statistical and conceptual issues related to measuring a dynamic economy. An often-stated concern is that the national economic accounts miss some of the value of some goods and services arising from the growing digital economy. We agree that measurement problems related to quality changes and new goods have likely caused growth of real output and productivity to be understated. Nevertheless, these measurement issues are far from new, and, based on the magnitude and timing of recent changes, we conclude that it is unlikely that they can account for the pattern of slower growth in recent years. First we discuss how the Bureau of Labor Statist...

Internet Interdisciplinary Institute-Universitat Oberta de …, 2009

Journal of Business and Economic Analysis

Digitalization has led to fundamental changes in the way people behave and live, and the way organizations, societies and nations operate. Although digitalization has brought about enormous benefits in general, it has also made the work of policymakers ever more challenging. A key responsibility of policymakers is consumer protection and this task is made ever more complicated with issues of data privacy and data ownership since many institutions and companies are now able to gather granular consumer data over transactions and the Internet of Things (IoT). For effective policy-making, policymakers need the right data and information. This is no longer straightforward with issues of valuation and measurement — how does one measure digitalization and its outputs, particularly with some new-age products and services being free and are readily available? Moreover, digitalization has brought with it wide-ranging implications for the labor market (such as with the rise of gig economy), ed...

2011

This ESDN Quarterly Report (QR) is a direct follow-up of the 6 ESDN Workshop in Berlin in early December 2010. It provides an overview of the various measurement approaches in the current “beyond GDP” debate that aim at measuring societal progress with more comprehensive indicators than the economic progress-oriented approaches. The aim of the QR report is to provide an overview of the debate at the conceptual and political level in the measurement initiatives in going “beyond GDP” as well as to outline the challenges ahead in the reforms towards measuring social progress. The QR is mainly based on the ESDN Case Studies No.3 and No.4, the background paper and discussions at the 6 ESDN Workshop in Berlin in December 2010 as well as the report summarising the debates at the workshop.

SSRN electronic journal, 2020

This paper describes an approach to measuring the gross domestic expenditures on the development of the digital economy. International attempts to define the digital economy and research expenditures on it are considered. As part of the methodology’s development, key definitions were presented: digital economy, digital technologies, and digital economy costs. Based on international experience, as well as on the specifics of Russian statistics, a methodology of measurement for the expenditures on the digital economy was proposed. The structure of the obtained indicator is multidimensional, which makes it possible to evaluate both the indicator as a whole and its sections. The proposed methodology involved making modifications to existing questionnaires and the first estimates based on them were made in 2020. The results of the study made it possible to estimate the domestic expenditures on the development the digital economy in comparison with the set goals approved by the national program «Digital Economy of the Russian Federation». In addition, the multidimensionality of the indicator revealed those areas of the digital economy that represented the «growth points» of the digital economy as a whole.

Electronics

Digitalization has become a watchword in all areas of economic and social activity, and its integration has become a necessity for every state worldwide. If a few years ago we were talking about technological innovation and cutting-edge technologies we are now talking about digital technologies, robotics, big data, and artificial intelligence, and future industrial production will develop in symbiosis with modern information and communication technology. The paper aims to show the impact of digitalization on macroeconomic indicators, including labor productivity, value-added, and value of exports of goods and services, and in this regard, we have built an econometric model to see how digitalization and the evolution of macroeconomic indicators work, and how they will influence the degree of growth and economic development. The research results verify the hypotheses we started from, namely that there is a positive and strong correlation between digitalization and productivity, as wel...

… Institution Workshop on …, 1999

Technovation, 2013

Digitization encapsulates the social transformation triggered by the mass adoption of digital technologies that generate, process and transfer information. The digitization index introduces a global measure of national performance reflecting ubiquity, affordability, reliability, speed, usability and skills. Output and welfare rise with the index while manifesting increasing returns to scale some implications for ICT public policy are drawn from these findings.

Policy Quarterly, 2018

Mismeasurement of productivity is one possible explanation for the global productivity slowdown in recent decades. This article discusses the challenges of measuring productivity in the digital age. The article covers some background about the productivity slowdown and about productivity measurement, the pressure that the growth in the digital economy is putting on productivity measurement, some estimates of mismeasurement from other countries, and the implications for New Zealand. The main conclusion is that, despite measurement issues, the productivity slowdown in New Zealand and elsewhere cannot simply be written off as measurement error. A further conclusion is that the digital economy has many benefits that fall outside conventional productivity measurement.

Proceedings of the International Session on Factors of Regional Extensive Development (FRED 2019), 2020

The relevance of the topic is due to the need to study the impact of ratings on economic development. The article examines the digital impact on government regulation in Russia, through the rating system. A comparative analysis of the international economic development indices of Russia and the leading countries is being conducted. In the context of the innovative vector of the development of the Russian economy, the use of information and communication technologies to improve the well-being of the population is described. The development of digital technologies contributes to their penetration into all areas of our lives and, having gained wide recognition, transforms the level of well-being of citizens. Innovations in information and communication technologies affect citizens' behavior, information needs and how people work and share information. Further advances in digital innovation will greatly enhance this change and provide us with exceptional services and well-being that were not previously expected. Digitalization blurs boundaries, resulting in a constant interconnection of societies at the international level.

International Review of Economics, 2014

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the measure of all final goods and services produced and traded within an economy in a given period of time, typically measured by adding together personal consumption, government expenditure, net exports and net capital formation. Despite seemingly being a mere unit of measurement, the use of GDP has attracted a significant amount of criticism, particularly for the way in which the concept has often been used by politicians and policy makers as shorthand for economic progress or an indicator of wider societal well-being (see Costanza et al. 2009). This is not, of course, a new criticism. Simon Kuznets, one of the co-creators of GDP, warned in the 1930s against the misappropriation of the concept, arguing that ‘the welfare of a nation can …scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income’ (Kuznets, 1934). As we shall see, GDP does not capture a number of critical aspects of a nation’s welfare, including the quality of its citizen’s lives, equality between those citizens and the depletion of natural resources, whilst it actively shapes the way in which policy makers see the economy and look to shape future growth – fuelling short term measures to boost economic growth today, at the cost of long-term decline or by adding to our carbon emissions. Nevertheless, for decades following the Second World War, GDP growth became the key focus for economic policy makers, acting a key frame for measuring and understanding an economy underpinned by the then-dominant Keynesian settlement (see Syrquin 2016), and remains so today. Moreover, whilst many assumed the global financial crisis might throw GDP’s utility into doubt, and thus allow for the promotion of alternative measurements, in reality the crisis served only to reinforce a traditional growth agenda as governments pursued economic recovery (Bleys and Whitby 2015). This review of the literature seeks to both explore the limitations of GDP in measuring aspects of our economy and society, as well as alternative ways of measuring and understanding the economy.

Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts, 2022

This paper will add to the growing body of research concerning the interaction between digitalisation of the public sector, namely, the government, and economic prosperity, that being growth in GDP, HDI, and decreasing unemployment. The novelty of this paper will be in its application of the Institutional approach to digitisation. The author approaches the issue from the perspective of the New Institutional School of Economics as pioneered by Acemoglu et al. (2011) in How Nations Fail, keeping extractive and inclusive political and economic institutions in mind. The institutional school holds that under non-inclusive economic conditions, growth becomes stunted, ergo, in a modern digital economy, a government that is lacking in its eGovernment should not be able to fully provide suitable conditions for economic growth. This paper analyses this hypothesis and finds no causality between an improved eGovernment and HDI or GDP but a strong relationship between improved eGovernment and lower unemployment rates.