Digital economy in Europe: Evaluation of countries’ performances

Abstract

The accelerated expansion of the Internet as a communication tool, the mobile internet, and the social networks and commercial platforms, commonly observed as digitalisation, have greatly affected the functioning of the economy and with it also businesses, public institutions, and individuals. The state of the digitalisation of business and industry varies between the European Union (EU) countries and regions. Each economy struggles to keep up with digitalisation in order to keep their productivity and achievement on a high level. Using the Composite I-distance Indicator (CIDI) methodology, we have created a multivariate indicator that can serve as a measurement of digital economy performances. Furthermore, we evaluate and rank 28 countries in EU (EU-28), based on their digital performances. We made an in-depth comparative analysis of countries in Europe, providing information about each economy with information on where they currently stand in terms of digital economy and what steps they need to undertake to improve and boost up their position in the domain of digitalisation.