The Digital Economy as Seen Through the OECD and Market Values
In 2014, an OECD report addressed the extent to which the information economy had survived the global financial crisis of 2008 and whether it was contributing to increased economic activity after the crisis. In reviewing its results, I will set aside the question of the difference between an information and a digital economy, partly because the digital is folded within the OECD’s statistical definition of the information economy and partly because definitions are a topic that will be discussed further below. The report judges the information economy both to have survived the 2008 crisis relatively well, though with a drop in research and development expenditure, and to be a key contributor to innovation in other economic sectors. ‘While the role of ICTs in science has become pervasive and demand for products from the information industries has increased significantly over the last decade, the aggregate weight of these activities declined slightly in the average of OECD economies, to little less than 6% of total value added and 3.7–3.8% of employment’ (OECD 2014: 37). In these terms, the information/digital economy is smaller than might have been thought; however, the OECD measures also emphasise how central ICT and the information economy is to other industries, making it difficult to separate a specific sector out.
Another measure is the international trade in ICT goods: ‘Between 2000 and 2012 world exports of manufactured ICT goods grew by 65% to more than USD 1.5 trillion. However, their share in total world exports of goods decreased by about 5 percentage points, partly due to widespread falls in unit prices’ (OECD 2014: 144). In other words, while the sale of goods deemed informational or digital grew rapidly, it still fell as a proportion of the overall economy, hovering at around 4 per cent of total world exports, varying from over 12 per cent in India down to negligible figures for some nations (OECD 2014: 145). Depending on where in the world the measure is taken, the information economy fluctuates between just over 10 per cent of an economy down to zero.
The next sets of figures draw on the categorisations underpinning the Financial Times and Fortune1 analyses of the 500 most highly valued companies in the world at three points: 2006, 2015 and 20172 (Fortune 2017; FT 2015, 2006). These figures (see Table 1.1) suggest that the digital economy makes up around 20 per cent of the total economy – possibly up to 30 per cent – and is worth around 6.5 trillion US dollars. There are discrepancies between the methods for the 2017 (Fortune) and the 2015/2006 (both FT) figures, with the significant increase in the percentage of the digital in 2017 related to values decreasing in other sectors to such an extent they are likely to be definition related. These figures also suggest that the proportion the digital sector occupies expanded slightly during the period after the 2008 financial crash, though not by an amount that seems overly significant or that is comparable to fluctuations in other sectors (the 5 per cent increase in manufacturing for example). Broadly, the digital sector appears to be as important as the financial and manufacturing sectors and roughly twice as important as the retail, service and extractive sectors.
Table 1.1 Economic Sectors – Total Market Value (USD millions)
| Manufacturing | Financial | Retail | Service | Digital | Extractive | Total | |
| 2017 | |||||||
| Market Value | 3,885,168 | 3,400,038 | 1,462,153 | 4,329,598 | 6,650,784 | 1,865,371 | 21,593,112 |
| % of Total | 17.99 | 15.75 | 6.77 | 20.05 | 30.80 | 8.64 | |
| 2015 | |||||||
| Market Value | 9,146,439 | 7,979,289 | 2,393,507 | 2,676,982 | 6,547,547 | 3,643,449 | 32,387,214 |
| % of Total | 28.24 | 24.64 | 7.39 | 8.27 | 20.22 | 11.25 | |
| 2006 | |||||||
| Market Value | 5,249,680 | 5,955,721 | 1,247,266 | 1,723,698 | 4,233,769 | 3,979,554 | 22,389,688 |
| % of Total | 23.45 | 26.60 | 5.57 | 7.70 | 18.91 | 17.77 |
Given what looks like a possible discrepancy in classification, and the aim here being only an initial rather than detailed look, the next analysis examines only the most recent 2017 numbers and some additional measures: revenue, net income or profit, total assets and number of employees (see Table 1.2).3 This comparison helps develop a sense of the differences between sectors. In terms of a pattern, the digital is relatively high in profit while being low in assets and moderate on employment. The fact that the sector has roughly 28 per cent of profits with only 16 per cent of revenue, 9 per cent of assets and 15 per cent of employees might be a starting point for understanding the high valuation of digital companies, which come out with 30 per cent of total market value. Retail having 28 per cent of employees but less than 8 per cent of profit suggests the importance of employment in this sector while also perhaps explaining its low market value of only 7 per cent of the total.
