Ada Cristina Marinescu (p), Lucian-Liviu Albu (p)

Last decades the public debt increased continuously in all countries of European Union. At present, in many countries this dangerous growth is seriously affecting the general process of economic development. Although in a number of countries the public debt is today larger than 60% of GDP, as the imposed limit by Maastricht Treaty, the problem of its sustainability is varying from country to country. Following recent published studies in matter of public debt sustainability, one objective of our study is to analyze the existence of a convergence or a divergence process both at the level of the whole EU and within the two major groups of countries (EU14 – old members of EU, after Brexit, and respectively EU11 – new eastern members adhered to EU after 2000). Other objective is to build a model to simulate the long term dynamics of the public debt as a function of standard variables (such as GDP growth, interest rate, budgetary deficit, etc.). Moreover, by using data from Eurostat, IMF, and World Bank, we try to estimate few essential parameters in order to control the public debt sustainability in each country of EU. Finally, countries are grouped in a number of classes for which certain policy measures could be evaluated.

Angel Luis Lucendo-Monedero, Reyes Gonzalez-Relaño (p), Francisca Ruiz-Rodríguez

The aim of this paper is to characterize and measure the differences in the levels of digital development (Digital Divide- DD-) in Spanish's companies in regions (NUTS II) in the context of the European Union (EU). The comparative analysis of the DD is made based on the adoption and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) at the firm level at two spatial scales: a) between the Spanish regions; and b) between Spain and the rest of the EU countries. The methodology is developed in several phases: 1) a factorial analysis (FA) is performed to identify the main variables that define the adoption of ICT in the firms of Spanish regions. These variables are derived from data from the Spanish Statistics Institute (INE: Survey on ICT and e-commerce use in enterprises), Eurostat (ICT usage in enterprises database) and Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI: dimension 4, Integration Of Digital Technology) of the European Commission. 2) Construction of a synthetic indicator (Digital Development Level Indicator-DDLI-) from the factors found. This indicator measures the degree of implantation and the use of ICT in the enterprise sector of each Spanish region and allows to calculate the DD between them. And 3) comparison, through the DDLI and DESI indicators, of the levels of integration of the digital economy of the Spanish regions and of Spain in the context of the EU.

Rosa Jorda-Borrell, Javier Lopez-Otero (p), Gustavo Contreras-Cabrera

The research conducted on digital divide (DD) of firms has been scarce, though many authors agree that ICT has a positive impact on competitiveness and firm success. This fact is explained by the high degree of dynamism and innovation inherent to the ICT industry, its capacity to transform other sectors (production systems and management processes), and to create new products and services. On the other hand, existing data sources show limitations that materialize in the scarcity and simplicity of the available information on the DD about the companies; since they are only available at the national level.

The purposes of this research are twofold: 1.- The identification and analysis of economic, technologic, and labor qualification factors which have an influence on DD of firms in developed countries. 2: Perform a predictive model through a regression analysis. Therefore our research belongs to the topic G16. Convergence/Divergence.

The data source to carry out this research were Eurostat and OECD databases at the national level. The selected variables were related to ICT in the firm, as well as economic, technologic, and personnel qualification factors of the environment. The sample consists of 50 developed countries located in Europe, America, and Asia-Pacific.

The method used to carry out the aim of this study was an OLS regression estimation, where the dependent variable is a construct of variables related to the DD of firms for each country. The construct was obtained from a Factorial Analysis which introduced variables like electronic commerce introduction in business practices, quality of download and upload infrastructure, ICT use in intra-firm and extra firm relations, cloud computing services, etc. The explanatory variables of the model were disaggregated into economic factors (GDP, GVA, firm size), technological (ICT share in the economy, ICT specialization, ICT patents) and qualification (ICT Personnel, business training)