1 option
The Digital Welfare of Nations: New Measures of Welfare Gains and Inequality / Erik Brynjolfsson, Avinash Collis, Asad Liaqat, Daley Kutzman, Haritz Garro, Daniel Deisenroth, Nils Wernerfelt, Jae Joon Lee.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Brynjolfsson, Erik.
- Series:
- Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w31670.
- NBER working paper series no. w31670
- Language:
- English
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);
- Place of Publication:
- Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2023.
- Summary:
- Digital goods can generate large benefits for consumers, but these benefits are largely unmeasured in the national accounts, including GDP and productivity. In this paper, we measure welfare gains from 10 popular digital goods across 13 countries by conducting large-scale incentivized online choice experiments on representative samples of nearly 40,000 people. We estimate that these goods--many of which are free to users--generate over $2.5 trillion in aggregate consumer welfare across these countries per year, which is roughly equivalent to 6% of their combined GDP. We find that lower-income individuals and lower-income countries obtain relatively larger welfare gains from these goods compared to higher-income individuals and countries. This suggests that digital goods may reduce inequality in welfare within and across countries by disproportionately benefiting lower-income groups.
- Notes:
- Print version record
- September 2023.
The Penn Libraries is committed to describing library materials using current, accurate, and responsible language. If you discover outdated or inaccurate language, please fill out this feedback form to report it and suggest alternative language.