WEFA has done work identifying which industries in the US are most vulnerable to Y2K disruptions. We identified the main risk factors as hardware risk, software risk, embedded chip risk, customer risk, supplier risk and macroeconomic risk. Measuring Y2K Vulnerability by Country WEFA has now developed a similar assessment of Y2K vulnerability by country, based on six risk factors. These are hardware risk, aging capital stock risk, industrial structure risk, import supply chain risk, export financing risk and infrastructure risk. Computer hardware intensity is an obvious and primary concern surrounding the Y2K problem.
Apparent consumption is defined as shipments plus imports minus exports.
The share of computer usage in GDP is averaged over the decade of the 1990s to form our hardware-risk measure. Our analysis indicates that Ireland is one of the high-risk countries for computer intensity due to its concentration in back office financial operations. Singapore is vulnerable to the computer intensity risk due to its computer-intensive trading operations, while Thailand is vulnerable due to its manufacture of electronic products. Since Y2K-compliance awareness has been high in recent years, equipment purchased in the past five years is more likely to be compliant than older equipment. The smaller the share of new investment, the greater the risk.