Publication: The Measurement and Analysis of E-Commerce: Frameworks for Improving Data Availability
Loading...
Published
2019-12-01
ISSN
Date
2020-01-14
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Interest in the expansion of e-commerce as a driver for economic development, especially ecommerce across borders, has intensified in recent years. While there is an apparent widespread consensus on the environmental factors necessary to promote e-commerce in developing countries, the basis of empirical evidence on both the extent of e-commerce and the extent to which this is associated with any of its drivers is disappointingly weak. This paper aims at summarizing the current state of affairs with respect to the availability of data and suggests some ways forward in terms of generating an increased supply of policy-relevant data and analysis.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Ferrantino, Michael J.; Koten, Emine Elcin. 2019. The Measurement and Analysis of E-Commerce: Frameworks for Improving Data Availability. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33175 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication China's Information Revolution : Managing the Economic and Social Transformation(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2007)This report presents a comprehensive overview of the information, communication and technological sector in China, and the role it has played during economic and social transformation in the past decade. It provides guidance on the kind of reforms policy makers in China may wish to consider in pursuing the country's quest for continued ICT development. It also combines local perspectives with international experiences on how issues in areas such as legal and regulatory environment, telecommunications infrastructures, and IT industry have been addressed by other countries.Publication Differentiating the Effects of Internet Usage and Wireless Usage on Business-to-Business and Business-to-Consumer E-commerce(Taylor and Francis, 2014-07-25)Information and communication technology (ICT) has contributed to global electronic commerce. In this study, researchers examine the effects of two types of ICT usage (Internet and wireless) on two types of e-commerce, namely, business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C). Based on panel data of 31 countries over six years (2005–2010), researchers' analysis confirms that both B2B and B2C e-commerce are positively affected by a country's economic growth but are affected differently by the two types of ICT usage. Moreover, ICT exerts a stronger effect on e-commerce in less wealthy countries than in wealthy countries. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.Publication Facilitating Trade and Logistics for E-Commerce(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12)The objective of this note is to identify the key issues in trade facilitation and logistics that affect the e-commerce landscape, with a focus on cross border (trade facilitation) domestic delivery (logistics); highlight key challenges and opportunities, particularly for developing countries and small and medium enterprises (SMEs); and provide a roadmap for potential areas of World Bank (WB) support in that landscape. This work has broadly covered areas such as customs and border management; information and communications technology for trade; logistics services, including competition issues; and trade-related infrastructure (ports, inland ports, airports, and so on). This note identifies the various issues and challenges relating to e-commerce from a facilitation and logistics point of view and identifies potential solutions, particularly those in which the WBG can play a role in helping developing countries. The note draws from a wide array of developments and literature and from work done by the WBG more generally in trade facilitation and logistics in assisting countries to improve their trade environment. The note explores the required building blocks for facilitating cross-border e-commerce as to address the challenges raised and consist of: (a) improvement programs for creating a more conducive legal environment for automation; (b) improving automation and interconnectivity between agencies; (c) implementing simplified procedures to trade, including for e-commerce; and (d) implementing fully the World Trade Organizations (WTO’s) trade facilitation agreement. The note concludes with the summation that e-commerce offers new challenges and opportunities for governments and firms, but to maximize its benefits requires significant reform. This note has set out a path for countries to continuing the reform and modernization route with recommendations and an action matrix of specific improvements to the trade facilitation and logistics environment that will better position countries and firms to take advantage of the enormous potential that cross border e-commerce offers.Publication Growing Industrial Clusters in Asia : Serendipity and Science(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2008)Can clusters be made to order? By Shahid Yusuf. Lessons from the development of silicon valley and its entrepreneurial support network for Japan by Martin Kenney. The emergence of Hsinchu science park as an IT cluster by Tain-Jy Chen. Coping with globalization of production networks and digital convergence: the challenge of ICT cluster development in Singapore by Poh-Kam Wong. Bangalore cluster: evolution, growth, and challenges by Rakesh Basant. ICT clusters and industrial restructuring in the Republic of Korea: the case of Seoul by Sam Ock Park. Constructing jurisdictional advantage in a mature economy: the case of Kitakyushu, Japan by Maryann P. Feldman. Kitakyushu: desperately seeking clusters by Kaoru Nabeshima and Shoichi Yamashita.Publication Reaching Entrepreneurs through Alternate Models : Lessons from Virtual Incubation Pilots(Washington, DC, 2014)Entrepreneurship is an essential component of a growing and dynamic economy. It is a key driver of competition, innovation, and net job creation. The founders of these enterprises can innately gravitate toward cities or hubs that provide them with the resources needed to start or grow their businesses. A 2013 report by Endeavor on what attracts entrepreneurs to cities (What Do the Best Entrepreneurs Want in a City?) noted that entrepreneurs are able to find relevant talent, resources, access to customers and suppliers, and often incentives such as lower taxes and business-friendly regulations in metropolises. infoDev focuses on enabling the start-up and growth of innovative enterprises. infoDev designed a small pilot project to test the merits and values of virtual incubation, recognizing that many innovative entrepreneurs in emerging and developing markets may be situated in less urban areas and that often even the more developed cities lack access to basic resources, such as access to Internet, electricity, or other services and talent. Virtual incubation aims to bring the range of services and tools provided by traditional business incubation to the entrepreneur, in contrast to the entrepreneur availing those services and tools at a fixed location. In addition, understanding that an entrepreneur may have varying needs, virtual incubation provides a more diverse range of these services and tools. This includes outreach services, drop-in services and facilities, online tools, consultancy, mentoring, and networking. The pilot project focused on Vietnam and aimed to assess the cost-effectiveness, sustainability, and impact of services and tools provided to entrepreneurs through this intervention. The pilot comprised a number of activities, including the development of a new generation of entrepreneurs in the country, the establishment of angel networks, the dissemination of best practices, and the expansion of entrepreneurial networks and communities across major hubs in Vietnam.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Pakistan at 100(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-03)This policy note was prepared in parallel to the report Pakistan at 100 - Shaping the Future. The report Pakistan at 100 discusses options to accelerate and sustain growth in Pakistan so that the country becomes an upper middle-income country when it turns hundred years old in 2047. This policy note discusses Pakistan’s slow transformation and the need to reallocate resources to the most productive uses.Publication Job Outcomes in the Towns of South Sudan(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-10-21)This study assesses jobs outcomes in the towns of South Sudan, based on a 2017 household survey and a dedicated 2019 youth jobs survey. It discusses how years of conflict have touched nearly all livelihoods, leaving few productive jobs, and causing high poverty. Most urban households diversify their job activities little, and rely on household work in agriculture, commerce or personal services, or they depend on a household member’s work for NGOs or as a public servant. Many young workers say they are ready to build from the less than attractive job activities available. Workers point to a lack of funding, insecurity, and low demand as the main obstacles to doing better. The study is one of a set of four reports assessing different aspects of jobs in urban South Sudan in order to formulate policy for recovery.Publication Getting to Equal(Washington, DC, 2011)To achieve gender equality and empower women, it is essential to invest in human development. The World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development (hereafter WDR 2012) brings the best global evidence to bear on the relationship between gender equality and development. A central theme running through the report is how investments and outcomes in human development namely health, education, social protection, and labor shape, and are shaped by, gender equality. This note is designed as a companion to the WDR 2012 and highlights some of the World Bank Group's recent experience with and impact on promoting gender equality through its work in human development. Gender equality benefits society as a whole. Greater gender equality today shapes the norms and cultures as well as the constraints and possibilities of tomorrow's men and women. A wealth of evidence demonstrates that gender equality begins a virtuous circle of higher productivity, lower poverty, and better development outcomes for generations to come.Publication Cote d'Ivoire(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12)The main objective of this technical note is to evaluate the institutional and implementation framework needed for strengthening payment systems as a core element of delivering social protection and labor (SPL) benefits to the poor, around which targeting, identification and monitoring systems operate. The assessment aims to support improving how new national programs and initiatives identify the poorest households, assess their needs and facilitate the delivery of investments and services to them by maximizing digital financial technology. The note is structured as follows. Following the introduction in section I, section II looks at institutional framework, including the regulatory environment for financial services as well as the personal identification (ID) landscape in Côte d'Ivoire. Section III assesses the current payment systems in the four focus programs chosen. Section IV provides recommendations for improvement of the payment systems of the four focus programs in the short and long term, with an eye not only toward improving service delivery for the beneficiaries of individual programs, but also toward improving coordination between programs.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.