Towards measuring the platform economy : concepts, indicators, and issues

As digital platforms provide consumers opportunities to interact with suppliers of goods and services through the internet, these platforms have radically transformed business activities as well as the nature of work. The disruptions from the novel corona virus pandemic also show how platforms enable people to cope with disruptions, and to increasingly produce goods and services themselves in some sectors such as transportation services, food and accommodation, and culture and recreational industries. These platforms provide intermediary and sometimes financial services, either implicitly or explicitly, and it is important for policy makers, businesses, and people, in general, have a better sense of the platform economy. National statistical systems, however, hardly give a clear and integrated portrait of the role, nature and size of the platform economy in large part because of measurement issues. In this paper, we define platforms, typologies and related definitions and classifications, describe drivers of value creation and capture in platforms, and discuss policy implications. These frameworks can lead to estimating the turnover, purchases, employment costs and marketing expenditures of platforms (especially those in the sharing economy), as well as the use of online technologies by platform-enabled firms, in comparison with non-platform businesses. We also discuss major challenges in data collection, arising from the cross-border nature of platforms, and the complex activities of platforms. We describe possible approaches for obtaining data and indicators for measuring the (digital) platform economy using existing business and household surveys (especially on ICT use), dedicated surveys, and web-scraping (complemented by ad hoc methods using site usage data). We also discuss albeit briefly some policy implications for the measurement of the platform economy (and the wider digital economy) especially as measurements will allow policy makers, businesses and the public, in general, to better understand the socioeconomic implications of increasing digitalization and the rise of the platform economy.