The Japanese daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun on June 27 ranked Korea fifth in digital economy competitiveness as measured by the "new GDP" of gross data product. (iclickart)
By Kim Hwaya
Korea has the world's fifth-highest competitiveness in the digital economy, Yonhap News said on June 27.
Quoting a report by the Japanese daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Yonhap mentioned the "new GDP" of gross data product, a term coined by Bhaskar Chakravorti, dean of global business at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts. GDP normally refers to gross domestic product.
The new GDP is based on four criteria: volume (the absolute amount of a country's broadband consumption); usage (the number of active internet users); accessibility (institutional openness to data flows); and complexity (the volume of broadband consumption per capita).
The world's top three producers of gross data product were the U.S., the U.K. and China in that order. America had the biggest volume of raw data produced and also got high scores in the other three criteria. The U.K. topped the accessibility category, while China had the largest number of users.
"The Nihon Keizai Shimbun expects the data economy to expand and the new GDP to emerge as a new index to forecast which nations will grow," Yonhap said.