Digital Construction led Growth Asymmetries in Europe: The need for Collaborative Culture

Abstract

This study delves into the exploration of asymmetries in the field of Digital Economics (DE) and specifically, within the digital construction sector, unraveling intricate relationships that guide its evolutionary journey. To unveil the complex relationship between GDP growth rates and Digital Construction (DC) we leverage the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), employing a panel dataset encompassing 27 European Union (EU) countries over the period 2017-2022. As a foundational tool for our empirical analysis, we perform Quantile via Moments regression, thus introducing this novel methodology to digital construction research. The findings reveal a consistent and statistically significant positive impact of DC on GDP growth rates, across the entire spectrum of economic conditions, but the effect is more pronounced at the upper quantiles of output. This result implies that stronger economies can use more efficiently the benefits of the Digital Construction compared to the weaker economies, thus signaling the need of the latter for structural reforms, to improve the integration rate of digitalization in the construction sector. The pronounced influence of the Human Capital component of DC underscores the pivotal role of nurturing human skills to effectively integrate digital construction techniques into infrastructure development, within a collaborative culture.

Keywords

• Digital construction
• Digital economics
• GDP
• Growth
• Collaborative culture
• Asymmetries