325ecosystem. First, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands are virtually tied for ﬁrst place. Second, Europe—especially its large countries, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain—is clearly in second place as a follower, not a leader. The Scandinavian countries, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland, as well as Switzerland, are stronger than the larger European countries. https://www. netzoekonom.de/plattform-oekonomie/ However, they are small in terms of population and output. Third, Asia is not really stronger than the European countries of Germany, France, Spain and Italy, which, however, lag behind the leaders. Fourth, China and India lag way behind the rest of Asia and Europe. Even if we account for measurement issues in large countries, the rankings are very helpful at the country level. The rest of the world tracks alongside other major indicators, including but not limited to the Global Entrepreneurship Index, the Ease of Doing Business, the Index of Economic Freedom, and the Human Development Index.11

Although the DPE score is useful to evaluate the digital entrepreneurship ecosystem of a country in comparison with other countries, this explains nothing about the strengths and weaknesses of any given country, for which the DPE Index must be

11The Ease of Doing Business has been discontinued by the World Bank. https://www.worldbank. org/en/news/statement/2021/09/16/world-bank-group-to-discontinue-doing-business-report Z. J. Acs

3262017 GDP

21.3 21.0 20.5 20.3 19.7 19.5 19.5 19.4 19.4 18.2 17.6 17.5 17.4 17.3 16.4 15.6 14.7 14.3 14.0 13.7 13.7 13.4 12.5 11.9 2020 DPE

El Salvador Dominican Guatemala Botswana Sri Lanka Mongolia Honduras Paraguay Republic Lebanon Vietnam Namibia Pakistan Ecuador Country Rwanda Jamaica Albania Senegal Zambia Tunisia Nigeria Algeria Kenya Egypt Iran

Rank 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102

22707 25664 20047 24224 17795 21528 15401 21615 24417 23756 19567 14024 18489 16832 50458 40139 15737 14399 13124 21335 43926 13721 15683 7668 2017 GDP

38.4 38.3 36.2 35.9 35.0 34.7 34.3 32.9 32.6 32.2 31.9 31.2 30.3 29.4 29.2 29.2 28.7 28.4 28.1 28.0 27.9 27.6 27.5 27.2 2020 DPE

Saudi Arabia Montenegro Costa Rica Argentina Colombia Mauritius Romania Thailand Hungary Uruguay Bulgaria Country Ukraine Panama Bahrain Mexico Croatia Turkey Greece Russia Serbia Oman Brazil China Chile

40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 Rank

53445 39255 47270 43114 46568 57428 64140 45991 44261 39522 63301 94921 35268 44357 38061 45116 42095 28110 54354 44439 38252 34986 32688 81443 2017 GDP Table 1 DPE ranking of the countries, 2019

84.8 82.4 82.2 78.2 76.6 76.1 74.1 71.1 69.3 68.9 66.0 65.5 65.1 64.3 63.5 62.6 62.5 59.9 58.4 57.0 56.8 56.3 56.1 55.6 2020 DPE

United Kingdom New Zealand United States Luxembourg Netherlands Switzerland Hong Kong Singapore Denmark Germany Australia Belgium Country Norway Sweden Finland Canada Estonia Iceland Austria Ireland France Korea Japan Israel

Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 The Digital Platform Economy and the Entrepreneurial State: A European Dilemma

327DPE Index score, European Union countries are denoted by a light blue color; the per capita GDP of the country is in purchasing power parity. Source: the World Source: Acs, Z. J., Szerb, L., Song, A., Komlosi, E., Lafuente, E. (2021b). The Digital Platform Economy Index: 2020, The GEDI Institute, www.thegedi.org

11.6 11.5 11.2 11.0 10.8 10.2 10.0 9.8 9.8 9.6 9.5 7.2 6.8 6.0

Madagascar Bangladesh Kyrgyzstan Zimbabwe Cameroon Cambodia Tanzania Ethiopia Burundi Uganda Malawi Benin Nepal Mali

103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116

12237 13055 16001 12072 23447 10765 68862 11327 9277 8390 8190 7236 4944 7286 6093

26.4 26.4 25.1 25.0 24.5 24.4 24.3 24.3 23.9 23.8 23.6 23.5 23.2 21.7 21.5

South Africa Herzegovina Kazakhstan Bosnia and Philippines Macedonia Azerbaijan Indonesia Moldova Morocco Armenia Georgia Kuwait Jordan India Peru

64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

33320 35705 27103 31339 49901 34700 29930 27944 31331 67133 23729 25669 118207 26036 29212

53.3 53.2 50.7 48.9 47.0 46.1 45.0 44.3 44.3 43.0 42.8 42.0 40.6 40.5 40.4

Czech Republic United Arab Lithuania Malaysia Emirates Slovenia Slovakia Portugal Taiwan Cyprus Poland Latvia Malta Spain Qatar Italy Bank (2017)

25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 Z. J. Acs

328broken down into its components. As seen in Table 2, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Netherlands are strong in all four areas: governance, citizenship, platforms, and entrepreneurship. It is also clear that the large European countries are in a secondary position in all four areas. For example, Germany (in 14th position overall) ranks 23rd in platforms, behind France in 16th. Spain ranks 25th in three out of four areas and Italy is not even listed in the top 25 overall, occupying 30th position. Table 2 also highlights that the United States leads in the digital multisided platform (DMSP) and digital technology entrepreneurship (DTE) sub-indices, but ranks third in digital user citizenship (DUC) and in digital infrastructure governance (DIG). The best sub-index score for the United States is 92.2 (DTE) and its worst is 79.0 (DUC). The United Kingdom’s performance is also well-balanced, ranging from 1st (DUC, 83.5) to 4th (DIG, 80.1). Some countries show even higher variations. For example, Australia, ranked ninth overall, is fourth in DUC (77.3) but only 18th in DTE (56.9).

3.2 European Countries

Examining the global results initially helps to isolate the position of E.U. member countries. These results then show that the United Kingdom outperforms most other countries in the world. In fact, it is on par with the United States in terms of institutions, agents, digital infrastructure, and users. Large E.U. countries—Germany, France, Spain, and Italy—lag signiﬁcantly behind. The argument of this chapter is that one beneﬁt of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union is that the Union was probably holding it back through regulation. London is the