Small, island nations like New Zealand lead the digital pack

(July 13): Larger economies may be in danger of losing the digital race to smaller and more nimble nations.

Several Nordic countries, Switzerland and tech-centric South Korea are ahead of the US and Japan, according to a digital economy ranking conducted by researchers at Tufts University in partnership with Mastercard Inc. When also factoring in nations' relative digital momentum, the real stars are New Zealand, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.

More than 170 indicators, including mobile broadband penetration, intellectual property laws and anonymised Mastercard data were used to rank 60 countries as of 2015, and to show how far they've progressed since 2008. This score, which the researchers called the Digital Evolution Index, quantifies the interplay between demand and supply within the digital economy, the level of support provided by governments and institutions and the pace of innovation.

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