An Overview of Digital Entrepreneurship in Central and Eastern European Countries

Abstract

The aim of the study is to explore and present an overview of digital entrepreneurship in Central and Eastern European countries and to examine how certain components of the DESI index affect GDP per capita in CEE countries and in what way modern information technologies affect their economies. The paper uses secondary data sources, mostly scientific and professional journals from the studied area, DESI reports, Eurostat data, and other Internet sources. The first part of the paper presents a short introduction on digitization digital entrepreneurship and digital technologies. The second part provides a descriptive analysis of digital entrepreneurship indicators and explores business demography in the ICT sector while the third part refers to the analysis of the DESI index. The panel method on data from 2015 to 2019 was used to show the influence of the different DESI index components on the observed countries’ GDP per capita. The hypothesis that the components of the DESI index have a positive impact on GDP per capita has been partially confirmed. DESI rank, Connectivity and Human capital did not prove to be significant, while Use of internet services, Integration of digital technology, and Digital public services proved their significant positive effect.