E-Government and Entrepreneurship: Online Government Services and the Ease of Starting Business

Abstract

Governments around the world are making active efforts to encourage entrepreneurship. At the same time, governments have also embraced digital technology, particularly the online delivery of government services. This paper examines the effect of offering government services online on the ease of setting up new businesses around the world. Panel data from almost 200 countries between 2002 and 2010 were assembled from multiple public databases and analyzed with fixed-effects regression models in STATA to measure how bringing more government services online affected the number of procedures required to start a new business, as well as the time and cost of these procedures. In this first multi-country time-series study of the effect of e-Government on entrepreneurship, free from the biases of cross-sectional studies, we find that providing more government services online did indeed make it easier to start up business, as did improvements in the ICT infrastructure and education level of the country. We find that the online delivery of government services benefited entrepreneurs by reducing the number of procedures needed to start a business, and by reducing the time and cost of these procedures. Our study provides strong evidence for the positive effect of e-Government on entrepreneurship.

Does digitalization limit the proliferation of the shadow economy in African countries? An in‐depth panel analysis

“…This could happen when such modernization eases the cost, time and procedures of formalizing businesses, and makes access to business‐related information and policies accessible and the taxation process more efficient and effective. This is consistent with the findings and arguments of Abu‐Shanab and Osmani (2019) and Das and Das (2021). The estimated result is also quite sizable: for every 0.1 point increase in digitalization, the shadow economy shrinks by 4%, from columns 1 to 6.…”

“…When associated with the shadow economy, digitalization or e‐government present various potentials for curtailing the extent of the shadow economy. For instance, (Das & Das, 2021) showed that the more digitalized government services are, the easier it becomes for formal ventures to be established. By implication, the extent of informal economic ventures will reduce.…”

“…These seemingly large sizes of shadow economies within African nations could hinder their growth and ability to generate revenue (Dell'Anno et al, 2018). However, we hypothesize that digitizing African economies and making government online services could ease business startup procedures and reduce both the time and the cost associated with early startup (Das & Das, 2021), thereby further reducing the sizes of informal economic activities. We are unaware of any econometric study focusing only on the case of Africa that investigates the potential of digitalization in propelling the region's efforts at curbing the expansion of shadow economic activities.…”

Corporate digitalization, application modes, and green growth: Evidence from the innovation of Chinese listed companies

“…From the macro perspective, previous researchers have studied the mechanisms of the digital economy promoting industrial ecological integration and innovation, thus achieving the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure and high-quality economic development. For example, Estevez and Janowski (2013), Almeida and Zouain (2016), and Das and Das (2022) study the role of the digital economy in economic development from the perspectives of sustainable development goals, business environment, financial development, international trade, entrepreneurship, respectively. These studies show that digital technology provides opportunities for innovation and promotes the organic integration between green technology innovation and green economic growth.…”

The impact of E-government on air quality: new evidence from China

“…According to Dhaoui (Dhaoui, 2022), E-government promotes sustainable economic development and creates opportunities for innovation. Das (Das and Das, 2022)believes that the development of E-government has made it easier to start a new business and initiate innovative ventures. Taken all the above together, there is an inseparable correlation between economic growth and environmental pollution (Zhang and Ran, 2023).…”