Title page
Contents
Acknowledgements 4
Executive Summary 7
1. Introduction 8
2. Background literature 10
2.1. Firm characteristics and the digital transformation: a conceptual framework over the COVID-19 pandemic 10
2.2. Digital technologies and teleworking during the pandemic 12
3. Data and methodology 18
3.1. Data and key variables 18
3.2. Empirical approach 20
4. Digital diffusion during the pandemic: cross-country evidence 21
4.1. General patterns of digitalisation over the COVID-19 pandemic 21
4.2. The diffusion of key applications over the COVID-19 pandemic: digital commerce, cloud, collaborative software, and analytics 31
5. Conclusions, policy discussion, and next steps 42
Endnotes 44
References 49
Annex A. Additional information about technologies and sample 55
Annex B. Additional regression analysis 58
Table 1. Digital technology classes, applications, and functionalities 19
Table 2. Adoption in bundles over the pandemic: Cloud, Analytics, and IT Security 40
Figure 1. Drivers and returns of digital adoption at the firm-level 11
Figure 2. Share of firms introducing new digital products during the pandemic 22
Figure 3. Firm productivity in 2019 and likelihood of introducing new digital products during the pandemic 24
Figure 4. Firm size in 2019 and likelihood of introducing new digital products during the pandemic 25
Figure 5. Firm digitalisation in 2019 and likelihood of introducing new digital products during the pandemic 26
Figure 6. Firm age in 2019 and likelihood of introducing new digital products during the pandemic 28
Figure 7. Share of firms introducing new digital products during the pandemic (technology class adoption vis-à-vis upgrading) 30
Figure 8. Digital applications that were adopted the most during the pandemic 32
Figure 9. Digital applications co-occurrences: network analysis 33
Figure 10. Co-occurrence of IT Development and Cloud 34
Figure 11. Supporting technologies and the adoption of Digital Commerce over the pandemic 37
Figure 12. Supporting technologies and the adoption of Collaborative Software over the pandemic 38
Boxes
Box 2.1. Teleworking during the pandemic 14
Box 2.2. The returns to digital adoption over the COVID-19 pandemic: the role of digitalisation for firm resilience 16
Box 4.1. Complementarities in the use of digital technologies: zooming in on the co-occurrences of digital applications 33
Annex Tables
Table A A.1. Complete technology classification 55
Table A A.2. Descriptive statistics - plants with information about digital products vis-à-vis plants in the overall sample 57
Table A B.1. Regression results for technology classes 58
Table A B.2. Digital applications regression coefficients 59
Table A B.3. Regression results for technology classes: alternative specification for digitalisation 60
Table A B.4. Regression results for technology classes - Manufacturing and Services 61
Table A B.5. Regression results for first adoption and upgrading 63
Table A B.6. Regression results for the first adoption of Digital Commerce 64
Table A B.7. Regression results for the first adoption of Collaborative Software 65
Table A B.8. Regression results for the first adoption of Analytics 66
Table A B.9. Regression results for the first adoption of Cloud 67
Table A B.10. Complete regression results for adoption in bundles: Cloud, Analytics 68
Table A B.11. Regression results for adoption in bundles: Digital Commerce 69
Table A B.12. Regression results for adoption in bundles: Collaborative software 70