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ELECTRONIC COMMERCE AND GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT GROWTH IN BULGARIA

Violeta Dimitrova, M. Kaneva

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to study the impact of e-commerce on the economic growth measured by GDP growth in Bulgaria. A brief summary of the importance of electronic commerce for the development of the economy is prepared. The research is based on the idea that e-commerce stimulates consumption and therefore economic growth. With the help of the statistical analysis of time-series, the change and the relationship between the indicators: capacity of the telecommunication network on the Internet retail sales, as well as turnover from the electronic retailing and GDP was studied. For the purpose of the analysis data from the National Statistical Institute of Bulgaria, Eurostat and Euromonitor was used. The survey results show that there is a significant increase, during the study period, of the number of internet users, the number of online shopping users, as well as the turnover of electronic retail trade in Bulgaria. The impact of technological change on the development of e-commerce is significant, as measured by the impact of the change in network capacity on Internet retail sales. Positive, albeit lower than expected, is the measured impact of growth in e-retailing on that of GDP.

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