Digital Economy in Visegrad Countries. Multiple-criteria Decision Analysis at Regional Level in The Years 2012 and 2015

Building effective digital economy infrastructure is currently a basic condition for improving international competitiveness of middle income countries that want to close their development gap and avoid the problem of a middle income trap. From the national perspective, investing in digital economy can be a tool which supports sustainable development and increases the speed of convergence process at regional level. In this context, comparative research on development of the digital economy, both at national and regional level, should be considered as an actual and important scientific task. Therefore, the main aim of the article is to assess and compare the development level of digital economy in Visegrad countries at regional level (NUTS 1). In the research, the digital economy is defined as a multiple-criteria phenomenon. As a result, in the empirical research, the TOPSIS method with application of generalized distance measure GDM was used. The data for diagnostic variables concerning digital infrastructure in the years 2012 and 2015 was provided by Eurostat. On the one hand, the analysis confirmed a relatively quick progress in building digital economy at regional level in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. On the other hand, significant disparities between the analyzed regions can be seen, especially in case of Polish regions.