Digital marketplaces are now significantly contributing to trade from/to a country (and this pace is accelerated due to forced digital transformation brought by COVID19). Trade openness allows socio-economic development of a country, if this is the case than digital marketplaces can be regarded as impact startups that influence the socio-economic fabric of a country, but can we actually estimate the impact of digital marketplaces on the trade openness of a country?
Digitalisation is linked with greater trade openness, selling more products to more markets and in less concentrated export baskets (Lopez-Gonzalez and Ferencz, 2018). ... Digitalisation also increases the benefits that can be drawn from regional trade agreements (RTAs).
In a longer perspective and technically, yes.
The digital market place can be a gate opener for trade of a country.
As long as the restrictive virus politics (fusion of a state and market, irrational interventions, liquidity trap,...) dominates, no.
In this case, electronics only substitutes for physical restrictions as lifeline of struggling business.
My expectation is that digital marketplaces will not necessarily cause more trade openness of a country since this opening of doors is in the realm of political decision rather than a development of citizens' attitudes.
The commercial openness of a country is measured in terms of ease of circulation of goods and services and, above all, by the low tax burden on them.
Then, everything else comes.
There is a global conviction that the process of digital transformation has a positive impact on the gross domestic product, including its per capita share. The literature in this regard indicates that countries that succeed in experiencing digital transformation become more prosperous than those that fail to achieve it.