Does the Digital Economy Distort the Volume-Price Split of GDP? The French Experience

L’économie numérique fausse‑t‑elle le partage volume‑prix du PIB ? L’expérience française

Lorraine Aeberhardt (), Florian Hatier (), Marie Leclair (), Benoît Pentinat () and Jean-Denis Zafar
Additional contact information
Lorraine Aeberhardt: INSEE - Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE)
Florian Hatier: DSED - DGEF - Département des statistiques, des études et de la documentation (DSED), Direction générale des étrangers en France (DGEF)
Marie Leclair: INSEE - Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE)
Benoît Pentinat: INSEE - Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE)
Jean-Denis Zafar: AXA France

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Abstract: The slowdown in economic growth over the past two decades is in contrast with the digitisation of the economy. As a result, certain economists are wondering about a possible problem in measuring GDP and, in particular, its volume‑price split. The article reviews the meth‑ ods used by statisticians, with a focus on France, to distinguish changes in price from changes in volume, with a particular attention to the particularities and difficulties linked with the digital economy: communication goods and services, the existence of forms of digital sales, the emergence of new digital services and the development of free services. While the methods put in place deserve to be questioned, a simulation shows that an error in the measurement of the prices of information and communication products is not likely to explain the slowdown in economic growth.

Keywords: consumer price indices; digital economy; GDP; volume-price split; économie numérique; indices des prix à la consommation; PIB; partage volume-prix (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://insee.hal.science/hal-05290504v1
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Published in Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics, 2020, 517-518-519, pp.139 - 156. ⟨10.24187/ecostat.2020.517t.2027⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05290504

DOI: 10.24187/ecostat.2020.517t.2027

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