International benchmarking and methodological framework for the development of the digital economy

In our paper, we benchmark the digital development of Russia against the countries of the European Union, based on the five principal dimensions of the International Digital Economy and Society Index (I-DESI). We analyse the relationships and redundancy between these dimensions and group the 29 countries in our data set with multivariate statistical methods, highlighting the position of Russia. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is used to reveal two latent components and causal relationships between our five main dimensions are examined with partial correlation analysis. Then cluster analysis is used to group the 29 countries and their position on the plane of the two components is explored with multidimensional scaling (MDS). According to our results, although Russia is a moderately developed country in terms of its digital development, its development path seems to stand out from that of its EU counterparts, owing to its unique geographic and economic characteristics.

Automated summary

This paper benchmarks the digital development of Russia against the European Union countries using the International Digital Economy and Society Index (I-DESI). The study reveals that Russia's digital development path differs from its EU counterparts due to its unique geographic and economic characteristics.