GDP-B: Accounting for the Value of New and Free Goods in the Digital Economy

Erik Brynjolfsson, Avinash Collis, Walter Diewert, Felix Eggers and Kevin Fox

No sptfu, OSF Preprints from Center for Open Science

Abstract: The welfare contributions of the digital economy, characterized by the proliferation of new and free goods, are not well-measured in our current national accounts. We derive explicit terms for the welfare contributions of these goods and introduce a new metric, GDP-B which quantifies their benefits, rather than costs. We apply this framework to several empirical examples including Facebook and smartphone cameras and estimate their valuations through incentive-compatible choice experiments. For example, including the welfare gains from Facebook would have added between 0.05 and 0.11 percentage points to GDP-B growth per year in the US.

Date: 2019-03-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pay
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

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Related works:
Working Paper: GDP-B: Accounting for the Value of New and Free Goods in the Digital Economy (2019)
Working Paper: GDP-B: Accounting for the Value of New and Free Goods in the Digital Economy (2019)
Working Paper: GDP-B: Accounting for the Value of New and Free Goods in the Digital Economy (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:osfxxx:sptfu

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/sptfu

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