IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/rsg/littra/2025-009.html

Does Digital Readiness Shield or Expose Economies? Evidence from Natural Gas Shocks and Volatility in the European Union

Author

Listed:
  • Jan VoharÄ Ã­k
  • Bohumil Koutník

Abstract

This study analyzes how digital readiness influences economic resilience to natural gas market instability in European Union countries. Using EU panel data from 2017 to 2022, the analysis integrates the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), indicators of natural gas price volatility, and macroeconomic outcomes within a two-way fixed-effects framework. Due to data availability, the shock-based analysis (RQ1) covers 27 EU countries, while the volatility-based resilience analysis (RQ2) is conducted for 25 countries. The results show that digital readiness does not uniformly stabilize economic growth. During severe gas market shocks, higher digital readiness is associated with larger short-term GDP contractions, indicating an amplification of shock transmission. In contrast, routine gas price volatility has no significant direct effect on growth. However, when volatility coincides with high energy dependency, digital readiness contributes to greater economic resilience by mitigating adverse growth effects. Robustness tests confirm the stability of these findings, highlighting a non-linear and state-dependent role of digitalization in the energy-growth relationship.

Suggested Citation

  • Jan VoharÄ Ã­k & Bohumil Koutník, 2025. "Does Digital Readiness Shield or Expose Economies? Evidence from Natural Gas Shocks and Volatility in the European Union," Littera Scripta, VSTE, vol. 18(2), pages 16-35, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:rsg:littra:2025-009
    DOI: 10.36708/LS.2025.I02.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://littera-scripta.com/articles/does-digital-readiness-shield-or-expose-economies-evidence-from-natural-gas-shoc-4389061b
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.36708/LS.2025.I02.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rsg:littra:2025-009. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Robin Kunju Mol Raj (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://littera-scripta.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.