Digital skills as an impetus for the acceleration of economic digitalization: EU perspective

Abstract

Digitalization, which gained momentum peculiarly after the invention of the Internet, has had a profound impact on the shape of the economy. It has changed the way of doing business and the labor market structure (Peetz, 2019). This change has brought the rise of automatized business processes and public services which aim to eliminate human manual work but at the same time cannot be realized without humans as a main component of information and communication technology (ICT). In order to fully leverage the positive effects of human capital in digitization, individuals must possess essential digital skills. This paper highlights the importance of citizens’ ICT skills for the acceleration of the digital economy, therefore the empirical analysis conducted examines the impact of different levels of digital skills on the digitalization of the economy. Additionally, the paper investigates whether the way individuals acquire digital skills differs between highly digitalized European Union (EU) economies and other parts of the Union. In this paper, secondary data sourced from Eurostat was used. To address the research questions, the pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) and least-square dummy variable (LSDV) models were utilized as well as the t-test. The findings of the study reveal a positive impact of digital skills on the digitalization of the economy. Furthermore, significant differences in the ways citizens acquire digital skills in most digitalized economies of the EU are uncovered.