Impact of digital connectivity on ease of doing business

The advent of information technology and its subsequent adaptation to human life and nature gave a new impetus to business. It created a timeless and spaceless society in which time and geographic barriers were no longer a hindrance to the flourishing of business. The symmetric and real-time information that flowed to the producers and consumers equally reduced the deadweight loss for both of them and helped them to make informative decisions. However, these logical explanations lack the empirical rigour in the existing literature. Given this background, the present chapter focuses on the impact of digital connectivity on ease of doing business. Considering the huge growth of information and technology in the last few years in Asia, the impact has been assessed for the Asian continent. Forty-two countries of Asia have been chosen, and their ease of doing business ranking (edb_it) has been chosen as the dependent variable. Per 100 mobile subscriptions (pmss_it) and per 100 fixed broadband subscriptions (pcb_it), along with air transport freight (million ton-km, atf_it), have been taken as the independent variables.