Published in:Bank of Italy Occasional Paper ; No. 662
Extent:
1 Online-Ressource (36 p)
Language:
English
DOI:
10.2139/ssrn.4016669
Identifier:
Origination:
Footnote:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments December 22, 2021 erstellt
Description:
The geographic digital divide has a significant, though largely unexplored, dimension within a country. This paper proposes an index of digital development for the Italian NUTS2 regions (rDESI) based on the European Commission’s Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI). The rDESI monitors the regional digital divide across five dimensions: (i) the infrastructure and the network usage (connectivity), (ii) the population’s digital skills, (iii) the use of internet services by households, (iv) the integration of ICT by firms, and (v) the level of digital services offered by local government. Southern regions tend to lag behind in most of these dimensions, even if infrastructures and the quality of connectivity appears quite homogeneous across the country. In the last part of the paper, we highlight the limitations of the DESI methodology, proposing some improvements