Estimating digital product trade through corporate revenue data

This paper introduces a novel method to estimate bilateral digital product trade using corporate revenue data from large digital firms. The method provides estimates for trade involving digital goods, productized services, and digital intermediation fees. Analysis reveals that digital product exports are more spatially concentrated than physical goods, exhibit faster growth, and can offset trade deficits. Further, countries with decoupled economic growth from greenhouse gas emissions tend to have larger digital exports, and these exports contribute positively to economic complexity.

Viktor Stojkoski, Philipp Koch, Eva Coll, César A. Hidalgo