DIGITAL ECONOMY OF UKRAINE: SOME APPROACHES TO MEASUREMENT AND ANALYSIS

Abstract

In the second half of the 1990s, intensive research into the digital economy foregrounded the task of assessing its size. However, it has not been fully accomplished to date. One of the reasons for this is the lack of an accurate conceptual definition of the digital economy, objective criteria that would allow it to be described at different structural levels and compared across countries.

Approaches to solving some of the above problematic issues are substantiated. It is proposed to consider the digital economy as a set of economic activities that ensure the production, circulation and consumption of digital and ICT goods and services in the national economy. Based on the definition, the macrostructural levels of analysis of the digital economy are specified. Their list, which includes the ICT sector, the “narrow” and “broad” digital economies, is supplemented by a new level, which involves the study of the basic digital economy, which ensures the production of both digital and ICT products. It has been hypothesized that the accuracy of measuring the size of the national digital economy can be improved if the methodology for its assessment is based on the indicator of the volume of the basic digital economy rather than the ICT sector.

      Testing the hypothesis with Ukraine as an example has made it possible to reach theoretical and applied generalizations that prove its accuracy. It is found that during 2016–2021 the average annual value of the ICT sector was 3.2%, and that of the basic digital economy – 5.0% compared to GDP, i. e., the difference between them was 1.8 pp, and in relative terms – 37.3%. Failure to take this difference into account leads to a considerable underestimation of the real size of the domestic digital economy.

     The facts collected in the paper show that, compared to economically developed countries, the basic digital economy in Ukraine had a much smaller impact on the digital transformation of enterprises and the national economy. In 2021 in Ukraine the “broad” digital economy exceeded the basic one by a factor of 2.4, while, for example, in the USA – by a factor of 7, and in Japan and China – by a factor of 5.