E-GOVERNMENT DEVELOPMENT AND BUSINESS TRANSACTIONAL EXPENDITURE: CROSS-COUNTRY EVIDENCE ON INTEREST RATE SPREAD DISTORTIONS, LOGISTICS PERFORMANCE, AND SERVICES TRADE RESTRICTIVENESS
E-GOVERNMENT DEVELOPMENT AND BUSINESS TRANSACTIONAL EXPENDITURE: CROSS-COUNTRY EVIDENCE ON INTEREST RATE SPREAD DISTORTIONS, LOGISTICS PERFORMANCE, AND SERVICES TRADE RESTRICTIVENESS

Summary/Abstract: Digital transformation of the public sector is increasingly relevant because it can reshape the costs firms face in finance, logistics, and cross-border service provision. This study investigates how e-government development and its human-capital, online-service, and telecommunication components influence interest rate spread distortions, logistics performance, and services trade restrictiveness across countries, and whether these effects are linear or non-linear. The analysis uses three unbalanced country panels covering 1,299 observations for 130 countries, 906 observations for 163 countries, and 306 observations for 51 countries, estimated with two-way fixed-effects models and Driscoll-Kraay standard errors, with robustness checks and quadratic specifications implemented in R. The results show that a 0.1-point increase in EGDI is associated with an approximately 0.45-point reduction in the absolute interest rate spread, while the robustness coefficient remains negative at -0.677. Human capital and telecommunication infrastructure are especially important in this dimension, with baseline coefficients of -3.921 and -1.910, respectively. In the logistics specification, aggregate EGDI is insignificant, but HCI is positive and significant (β = 0.372), and a 0.1-point increase in HCI raises the Logistics Performance Index by about 0.037 points. In the services-trade specification, EGDI reduces STRI by -0.095. At the same time, HCI shows a U-shaped effect with a turning point at 0.975, indicating that digital human capital lowers restrictiveness up to very high levels before the relationship turns upward.

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