DIGITAL CONNECTIVITY AND EXPORT PERFORMANCE: A PANEL-DATA ANALYSIS OF OECD ECONOMIES, 2010–2024

This study examines the relationship between digital connectivity and real export performance in 38 OECD economies during 2010–2024, extending the marketing information systems and distribution-channel framework in Gökmen (2000). World Development Indicators provide 570 potential country–year records and 569 complete cases for country- and year-fixed-effects estimation. In the joint model, internet use (β = −0.00080, p = 0.692) and fixed-broadband subscriptions (β = 0.00325, p = 0.371) are not statistically significant once income, foreign direct investment (FDI), population and fixed effects are included. GDP per capita has a positive association with exports. Connectivity findings remain statistically insignificant after winsorizing FDI, excluding extreme FDI observations, excluding Luxembourg and omitting 2020–2021. In contrast, the negative FDI coefficient loses statistical significance when Luxembourg is excluded. The results distinguish national access to digital connectivity from firm-level marketing information capabilities and provide descriptive associations rather than causal effects. An alternative dependent-variable specification using exports of goods and services as a percentage of GDP also finds insignificant internet (β = −0.0261, p = 0.794) and broadband (β = 0.1172, p = 0.654) coefficients (N = 569). Thus, the central inference holds for both real export levels and export intensity, although the models identify associations rather than causal relationships.