「释义」
数字经济是指基于数字计算技术的经济。主流观点认为数字经济是基于互联网的市场开展业务，因此数字经济也称为互联网经济、新经济或网络经济。
由于用户、企业、设备、数据和流程之间数十亿的日常在线连接，数字经济与传统经济的边界逐渐消失。数字经济基于互联网、移动技术和物联网（IoT）带来的人员、组织和机器的互连性。
数字经济的基础是信息和通信技术（ICT）在业务部门中的普及。经济的数字化转型正在重塑组织架构、消费者如何获得服务、信息和商品等传统观念，以及对政府如何出台监管措施提出挑战。
「应用场景」
我们来做个交易。如果你放弃使用谷歌搜索一个月，我们付你10美元。不愿意？那么100美元呢？1000美元呢？如果想让你放弃使用维基百科，你出价多少？这些答案都能帮我们理解数字经济的价值。
Suppose we make you an offer. You give up access to Google search for one month, and we pay you $10. No? How about $100? $1,000? What would we need to pay you to forgo access to Wikipedia? Your answer can help us understand the value of the digital economy.
数字产品的价值未反映在GDP中，是因为GDP是根据人们购买的产品和服务计算的。除了极少特例，如果某物标价为零，那么它对GDP的贡献也为零。但我们大多数人从维基百科和在线地图中获得的价值，比之前那些更昂贵的纸质版本要多。
The reason the value of digital offerings is underrepresented is that GDP is based on what people pay for goods and services. With few exceptions, if something has a price of zero, then it contributes zero to GDP. But most of us get more value from free digital goods such as Wikipedia and online maps than we did from their more expensive paper predecessors.
政策制定者根据GDP数字，进行从基建、研发、教育到网络安全等投资决策。监管者利用GDP来制定影响科技公司和其他组织的政策。因为数字化的效益被极大低估，所以这些决策和政策都对现实反映不够。
Policy makers use GDP data to make decisions about how to invest in everything from infrastructure and R&D to education and cyberdefense. Regulators use it to set policy that affects technology firms and other organizations. Because the benefits of digitization are dramatically underestimated, those decisions and policies are being made with a poor understanding of reality.
有效的数字经济管理依靠我们精确评估免费数字产品和服务的能力。这就是为什么我们开发了新方法来衡量消费者花多少钱购买数字产品，以及从中受益多少。这类没有计算的利益数量极大。
Effective management of the digital economy depends on our ability to accurately assess the value of free digital goods and services. That’s why we developed a new technique to measure not only how much consumers pay for digital products but how much they benefit from them. And that uncounted benefit is substantial.
《如何衡量数字经济》
埃里克·布莱恩约弗森，阿维纳什·克里斯
2019年12月刊
“How Should We Measure the Digital Economy?”
by Erik Brynjolfsson and Avinash Collis
编辑：马冰仑
