由於電腦的普及與資訊科技的發達，數位落差（Digital divide）的現象亦普遍發生 於世界各個國家。「資訊富人」（information rich）能夠輕易透過資訊平台（電腦、手機 等上網媒介）使用科技，以獲取所需之資源與訊息；而另一族群則未能有機會學習使 用操作資訊平台以獲取外界的資訊（該族群可稱之為「資訊窮人」」；information poor）。 在數位時代中，有能力運用電腦、網路等數位資訊的人，將擁有更多的機會創造財富。 也因數位落差與數位不均所造成的差異飛快的累積，使得數位化(digitalization)的結果 將造成所得不均，抑或是快速地拉大人民財富的差距。 在本研究計畫中，我們有興趣的是在全球數位化的過程中，對各區域之間所得差距 的分佈將會有何影響？數位化對所得高者之影響與所得低者得影響程度是否相同？是 對所得水準高者影響較大，抑或是對所得低者影響較大？而數位化對所得影響是否會 遞減（或是遞增）？在考慮「空間相依性（spatial dependence）」的特性後的結果又會 是如何？本研究計畫將結合空間計量模型與分量迴歸模型，並考慮模型中的內生性 (endogeneity)，特別是空間變數與數位化等變數，進而以兩階段分量迴歸模型（Two Stage Quantile Regression）與空間計量模型的結合，進行實證的估計。本研究計畫之研究結 果望能對於國際經濟現狀有更深一層的了解，以供政府改進國內所得分配現狀時政策 制定之參考。 “Digital divide” has been increasing popular recently due to the dramatic technological changes. “Information rich” can easily reach the needed resources and information via the usage of computer network, while “information poor” often hardly have the opportunities to learn computer techniques to obtain outside information. In the current digitalization era, it is believed that people with a higher ability to acquire most of needed information will have a higher probability to create their wealth than those without. Therefore, digital divide is considered as an important factor of widening income inequality. In this research proposal, we are interested in how digital divide affects regional income distribution across countries in the process of digitalization. Are the impacts on countries with higher income the same as the countries with lower income? Does the impact of digitalization on income monotonically increase? Furthermore, with the characteristic of spatial dependence across regions (countries), we have to take the regional spillover effect into account when analyzing above issues. By combining spatial econometric and quantile regression techniques, with the consideration of endogenous problems in the estimation, a two-stage spatial quantile regression model will be developed in the empirical analyses. We believe the results of this research can provide a further policy implication in improving income distribution across countries.
