1 / 7

Thoughts on the e-commerce chapter

Agenda item 9. Thoughts on the e-commerce chapter. By Marshall Reinsdorf for presentation at the UNECE Group of Experts on National Accounts April 28, 2010. Definition Question. Definition of e-commerce is unsettled:

neena
Download Presentation

Thoughts on the e-commerce chapter

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Agenda item 9 Thoughts on the e-commerce chapter By Marshall Reinsdorf for presentation at the UNECE Group of Experts on National Accounts April 28, 2010

  2. Definition Question • Definition of e-commerce is unsettled: • Delivered to customer’s computer over a wire, or justordered using a computer or customized ordering software over a wire? • What about just delivered over a wire, e.g. online advertising? • Just over internet, or over any kind of network? • Can be classified into B-to-B, B-to-C, and C-to-C. • Estimates vary a lot depending on definition chosen by researcher.

  3. Economic Rationale • Lower transactions cost. • Increased competition (all the gains may go to consumers). • Allows reorganization/rationalization of the production process.

  4. Data Challenges • Underestimation of trade flows likely worsened by growth of small-valued transactions and by appearance of new kinds of trade in services. • We may not be surveying the right firms or asking the right questions of those we do survey (or of surveyed households). • Measures of retail expenditures may include exports or miss imports. (Note that unmeasured consumption and imports of online music do NOT distort measurement of GDP.) • Scope of CPI price surveys and outlet substitution bias. • How to measure/handle C-to-C commerce.

  5. Observations about Definition Question • What types of questions are various definitions best suited for? • Advantages/disadvantages of broad and narrow approaches? • More explicit discussion of international vs domestic e-commerce would be helpful: hard to know when the topic is just trade. • Greatest interest is in e-delivery definition and newly tradable services. • Include advice about survey design (e.g. respondents may report communications service as trade in deliverables, or vice versa.) • Reminders of applicable general principles of measurement of trade in services need more prominence.

  6. Observation about Economic Rationale • Increased range of varieties available for final (or intermediate) consumption is another critical benefit. • Reorganization of production often takes a long time to fully play out. Includes growth of within-firm specialization or centralization, increased outsourcing/offshoring of some kinds of activities, better supply chain/inventory management, and fragmentation of the production process. • What are implications of this for measuring economic growth or productivity growth? • Possible effects of new kinds of trade in services on employment: how many jobs are offshorable?

  7. Observations about Measurement Challenges • Need to consider how to change surveys, questions and data collection methods to capture small value transactions and new kinds of transactions. • Are our classification systems flexible enough and completeenough to keep up with new kinds of trade made possible by e-commerce? • Do profits on C-to-C commerce belong in GDP/GDI? • Inclusion of C-to-C imports in consumption, and C-to-C exports in change-in-inventories.

More Related