Pavle Sicherl

Methodological Challenges of Digital Divide Measurements

The term “digital divide” has been used for almost a decade and typically relates to sociodemographic differences in the use of information and communication technology. However, the corresponding measurement is still relatively imprecise. Very often it is simply reduced to comparisons of Internet penetration rates. This article extends the measurements above the usual bivariate comparisons. Within this context, three essential approaches are presented and critically evaluated. First, loglinear modeling is used to address the interactions among the factors affecting the digital divide. Second, compound measures (i.e., the Digital Divide Index) that integrate a number of variables into a single indicator are discussed. Third, time-distance methodology is applied to analyze changes in the digital divide. The article argues that these approaches often yield entirely different conclusions compared to simple bivariate analysis. The examples are presented as a general warning against an oversimplified methodological approach to digital divide studies.

Integrating Comparisons Across Time and Space: Methodology and Applications to Disparities within Yugoslavia

An extended conceptual and analytical framework is elaborated where proximity in time as one dimension of a multidimensional concept of disparity is used as a tool to integrate space and time in comparative analysis. Time distance measures the difference in time (number of years) when two compared units achieve a given level of the indicator. Time distance emphasises a novel perspective of disparity between the compared units, and time is a universal unit of measurement comparable between countries, levels and units of comparison. It complements rather than substitutes for conventional measures, at the conceptual level the overall degree of disparity is looked upon as a weighted combination of static and dynamic dimensions of disparity. The interrelationships between efficiency, growth, disparity and equity are in this conceptual framework more pronounced than in the conventional analysis. The empirical analysis of regional disparities in the former Yugoslavia confirms the theoretical proposition that static and dynamic analysis can lead to very different analytical and policy conclusions. The comparative analysis of socio-economic data sometimes employs comparison across time within a country, e.g. monitoring trends in productivity, per capita income or unemployment. Alternatively, comparison is made across space between countries, e.g. comparing the level of productivity or unemployment in different countries at a given point in time. In each case, the analysis seeks to identify disparities. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the advantage of analysing disparities, referred to often as inequalities or differences, by integrating comparisons across both time and space. Empirical examples from the *This study has been finalised during my stay as a European Community TEMPUS scholar in the United Kingdom. It uses some parts of the reports prepared earlier for the Ministry of Science and Technology of Slovenia, UNRISD, OECD and the World Bank. I should like to express my gratitude for the comments and suggestions to Richard Rose and John OConnor, and to the participants of seminars at the University of Bergen and Glasgow University. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.133 on Fri, 17 Jun 2016 05:05:45 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Slovenian catching up with the developed countries: when and how?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide assessment of the current status of economic development and policy suggestions as to how Slovenia can catch up with developed countries and close the development gap.Design/methodology/approach – The paper first analyses world development scenarios. Part two is devoted to the calculation of development gaps by novel time distance methodology in order to identify major reasons for lagging behind and concludes by providing policy ideas how to close these gaps.Findings – The time lag for GDP per capita with the EU 15 average is 18 years, and larger when Slovenia is compared to the successful small EU member states. The optimistic scenario of catching up in 16 years would require 2 per cent higher growth rate than EU 15 average. This time would be shorter if the government policy would promote the knowledge‐based economy, internationalisation, innovative capabilities and become more effective, responsive, flexibile and closing persistent implementation and co...

Comparing in two dimensions: a broader concept and a novel statistical measure of the time dimension of disparities

The increasing integration of EU countries and the introduction of a new round of Applicant countries has created the need for more comparable statistics on indicators and more standardised statistical measures. Hence, indicators such as life expectancy, or GDP per capita have been used for measuring the ‘progress’ of Candidate countries in the Enlargement process, mainly as static measures like Gini coefficients, while the dimension of time is not well developed. In this paper, I argue for a new complementary kind of statistical measure, the S-distance, that would measure the distance (proximity) in time between the points in time when two series are compared that have reached a specified level on indicator X. This can lead to very different analytical and policy conclusions about the interrelationship between growth and inequality. In the empirical section a selected set of economic and social indicators for five candidate and three EU cohesion countries is compared with the EU15 average. It is demonstrated that the degree of disparities across indicators may be very different in static terms and in time. For all eight countries no significant correlation was found between the ordering of indicators by static measure of disparity and by time distance. This confirms that the new broader methodology can provide new insights from existing data and serve also as an excellent analytical and presentation tool for policy debate across many fields of concern.

Analysis of information society indicators with time distance methodology

A novel generic statistical measure S-time-distance complementing existing methods of analysis of time series data is briefly presented. The application to indicator analysis shows that the gap between compared units may be very different when compared with commonly used static measures and with time distance measure, leading to a special typologyof indicators. Analysis ofindicators like PC per 100 inhabitants and Internet users per capita will show the empirical results for EU countries.

Benchmarking digital divide: definitions used and methods applied

Paper first discusses some specifics regarding terminology and concepts of the first, second, dual and third digital divide. Paper also extends the measurement of the digital divide phenomena above the simple comparison of percentage related to the information technology penetration across different countries and socio-demographic segments. Two examples of advanced methodological measurements are presented: a composed measure - the digital divide index (DIDIX) and the time distance methodology, which offers a significant improvement at both conceptual and application levels

Growth and the time dimension of inequalities

From among the many forms of interconnection between growth and distribution, this paper deals with the concept and measurement of the time-dimension of inequalities and the role which the rate of growth plays in determining the time-dimension of inequalities and thus the overall extent of inequality. In analysing this interconnection, the existing inequalities can be viewed from a new perspective which may also be helpful in diminishing the incidence of conflict between growth and distributional objectives.