Long abstract

About Statistics Publications & Documents Information by Country

Electronic commerce is creating a new mode of delivering new types of products in a global market in which geographical boundaries and location lose their meaning. This paper, which is an extension of earlier work on measuring electronic commerce, focuses on how the Internet will affect practices of measuring and thinking about trade transactions. It uses available sources and statistics for software to try to measure the extent to which international transactions are, or could become, "digital" and raises policy issues related to international trade in electronic markets.

Most countries' value added taxation (VAT) systems require making a distinction between goods and services. Goods and services also fall under distinct trade agreements - the GATT and the GATS, respectively. Yet, newspapers, software packages, and CDs can now be converted into bits and delivered electronically, and the same will be true for other goods in the future. The growth of electronic commerce will probably require a re-evaluation of how certain transactions are classified.

Even if the available data are poor, evidence on on-line software sales, together with data on the growing and globalising market for packaged software, can be used to show that:

- While the ?digital? industry is not yet covered by international statistics, US data suggest that it is large and growing rapidly. - Pre-packaged software is the most dynamic software industry segment. Worth $109.3 billion in 1996, it expected to double by 2002 ($221.9 billion). - Traditionally dominated by the United States, the packaged software market is becoming global. Software markets in Canada, France, Germany and Japan have shown above OECD average growth rates. The German market is estimated at 8.6 per cent of the world packaged software market.