Digital Economy And Income Inequality
“DIGITAL ECONOMY”
Introduction
At present, we have devoted an effort to describe the impact of Information and Communication Technologies on income distribution in Thailand. Some concepts have aroused as Digital Development, Information Society, Knowledge-based societies, Network Societies…and above all, the needs to make the evolution of these theoretical constructs measurable. This effort has served many purposes, being the more relevant (a) explaining what was the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) on Thailand (b) measuring this impact (c) designing policies to foster positive impacts while reducing negative ones Beyond – or within – general theoretical approaches, applied models have been built to identify the core aspects that made up a particular understanding of the interaction of ICTs and Society, and tried to draw the relationships amongst these aspects. In some cases, the translation of these issues into specific indicators made possible the measurement of the evolution of the digital economy – as understood by each model and the establishment of relationships of cause within models, relationships upon which policies were to be built. In the following pages we identify and analyze what have been the main models to quantitatively describe and measure the digital economy, understood as the results of the process of digitization of society and its economy, and the prior or first stage upon which more complex theories are based upon. First, we focus on the theoretical and methodological proposals for modeling the digital economy. We are particularly interested in their conceptual approach, although some of these models have been applied also in surveys and assessment. When not applied, these models have framed future understandings and designs of more practical models. We secondly switch to cases of actual implementation, that is, sets of indicators and composite
Introduction
At present, we have devoted an effort to describe the impact of Information and Communication Technologies on income distribution in Thailand. Some concepts have aroused as Digital Development, Information Society, Knowledge-based societies, Network Societies…and above all, the needs to make the evolution of these theoretical constructs measurable. This effort has served many purposes, being the more relevant (a) explaining what was the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) on Thailand (b) measuring this impact (c) designing policies to foster positive impacts while reducing negative ones Beyond – or within – general theoretical approaches, applied models have been built to identify the core aspects that made up a particular understanding of the interaction of ICTs and Society, and tried to draw the relationships amongst these aspects. In some cases, the translation of these issues into specific indicators made possible the measurement of the evolution of the digital economy – as understood by each model and the establishment of relationships of cause within models, relationships upon which policies were to be built. In the following pages we identify and analyze what have been the main models to quantitatively describe and measure the digital economy, understood as the results of the process of digitization of society and its economy, and the prior or first stage upon which more complex theories are based upon. First, we focus on the theoretical and methodological proposals for modeling the digital economy. We are particularly interested in their conceptual approach, although some of these models have been applied also in surveys and assessment. When not applied, these models have framed future understandings and designs of more practical models. We secondly switch to cases of actual implementation, that is, sets of indicators and composite