| By: |
Nathan, Max (London School of Economics);
Rosso, Anna (National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR));
Bouet, Francois (Growth Intelligence) |
| Abstract: |
Governments around the world want to develop their ICT and digital industries.
Policymakers thus need a clear sense of the size and characteristics of
digital businesses, but this is hard to do with conventional datasets and
industry codes. This paper uses innovative 'big data' resources to perform an
alternative analysis at company level, focusing on ICT-producing firms in the
UK (which the UK government refers to as the 'information economy').
Exploiting a combination of public, observed and modelled variables, we
develop a novel 'sector-product' approach and use text mining to provide
further detail on the activities of key sector-product cells. Overall, we find
that the ICT production space is around 40% larger than SIC-based estimates,
with almost 70,000 more companies. We also find ICT employment shares over
double the conventional estimates, although this result is more speculative.
Our findings are robust to various scope, selection and sample construction
challenges. We use our experiences to reflect on the broader pros and cons of
frontier data use. |
| Keywords: |
quantitative methods, firm-level analysis, Big Data, text mining, ICTs, digital economy, industrial policy |
| JEL: |
C81 L63 L86 O38 |
| Date: |
2014–11 |
| URL: |
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8662&r=ict |