Digital Economy: The Correlation Between Digital Technology and Economic Growth – An Emperical Application

1. The Concept Of Digital Economy

The main driving force of digitalization is actually digital technologies. In this respect, it is very important to examine the development of digital technology sectors in that country when evaluating the transition process of a country to the digital economy. Digital technology sectors include all products, technologies, services and systems that read, store, transmit and process digital information, the components of these products and technologies, the creation of digital information, all products, technologies, services and systems related to digital information (Taymaz, 2018).

The aim of this study is to make a general assessment about the concept of digital economy and to examine the effect of digital technology, which is the most important part of the digital economy, on economic growth. In the second part, following the introduction of the study, a general information is given about the concept of digital economy, its scope and features. In the third chapter, the relationship between digital technology and economic growth is presented with a literature review. In the fourth chapter, an econometric application is made on Turkey and the findings obtained from the analyzes are evaluated. The last part is the conclusion part.

The concept of digital economy has been defined in many ways since the mid-1990s and its scope has expanded day by day. This concept, which used to express technological change and the use of technology by producers and consumers, has gained a different dimension with the development of the internet. The concept of digital economy was first introduced to the literature by Tapscott in 1995. According to Tapscott (1995), information stored in computers moves very quickly between networks and information becomes digital in all its aspects in this way. Later, the concept of digital economy was defined by many people. Carlsson (2004) defines the digital economy as the economy based on digital technologies, Dinana (2019) as the global network of economic and social activities acquired by digital technologies, and OECD (2019) defines the change that makes technology more competent and encourages innovation in all sectors of the economy. The work of Bukth and Heeks (2017) in this area is very important for the conceptualization of the digital economy. In the study, the concept of digital economy is defined in three ways as core, narrow-scoped and broad-scoped. Using this study, the scope of the digital economy can be explained with the help of Table 1.