Editorial for the special issue: Digital Economy and E-commerce Technology

The aim of this special issue is to provide insights into the use of Operational Research (OR) applications in the context of the digital economy and electronic commerce (e-commerce) technologies. The term ‘‘digital economy’’ (or Internet economy) refers to all the economic and social activities that are enabled by the Internet and the other Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). The digital economy is not a totally new economy, but rather the whole of new ways to accomplish the usual economic and social activities through the use of ICTs. In the past, there were numerous applications of OR in the microand macro-economy; nowadays OR also seems to offer a great potential to the further development of the digital economy. There are many issues in the context of the digital economy which need to be studied to a greater extent. Some of them are indicatively mentioned in the following lines: (1) the modeling of the pricing on the Internet, (2) the assessment of the economic changes arising from the use of open-source software, (3) the assessment of the economic implications of software piracy, (4) the measurement of digital inequalities in the usage of ICTs, and (5) the measurement of productivity and efficiency in the Internet economy. A reasonable question that rises is whether the