Digital Readiness Regimes

Replication Package – Digital Readiness Regimes

This repository contains the replication materials for the paper: “Digital readiness regimes and development dynamics: The role of governance and skills beyond connectivity”.

This project investigates cross-country differences in digital development by introducing the concept of digital readiness regimes, understood as multidimensional configurations of:

• digital infrastructure,
• human capital,
• innovation capacity,
• and regulatory quality.

Sources:

The analysis combines macro-level indicators from:

• World Bank (WDI)
• ITU (ICT indicators, regulatory tracker)
• UNCTAD (FTRI index)
• UN Comtrade (trade structure)

All variables are documented in the Appendix of the paper.

The replication files reproduce the main empirical steps of the paper:

• Data construction
  • assembling a country–year panel (2010–2023),
  • merging indicators from multiple international sources,
  • harmonizing country names and handling missing data.
• Clustering analysis
  • standardization of variables,
  • identification of digital readiness regimes using k-means clustering,
  • validation using silhouette scores and robustness checks.
• Regime dynamics (STATA)
  • construction of Markov transition matrices,
  • estimation of persistence and mobility across regimes.
• Econometric analysis (STATA)
  • multinomial logit models of regime membership,
  • robustness checks (ordered logit, transition models, alternative specifications),
  • computation of average marginal effects.
• Visualization (R)
  • generation of figures (cluster plots, boxplots, transition heatmaps),
  • visualization of marginal effects and model results,
  • preparation of publication-ready graphs.