Human activity is highly dependent on information. What to eat? Which movie to watch? Where to travel? What to study? Where to work? It all depends on information. The same applies to economic activity, where information has a crucial influence on business strategy: which products and services should we provide? Where should we produce them? How should we sell them? What is the marketing strategy? At which price? Et cetera.It also influences economic policy by governments, by central banks, and of course, information has a profound impact on the functioning of financial markets.
Oxford Insights’ AI 2023 preparedness index offers a great starting point to harness the digital divide across the region with Brazil and its vibrant Fintech sector on one end of the spectrum and Haiti on the other, lacking basic infrastructure. To that point-in-time snapshot, however, we can add a backward-looking component (investment rate over the past decade) and a forward-looking one (projected fiscal space) to get a more complete picture of some of the challenges lying ahead as the region furthers its digital transformation.
