Measuring convergence of China's ICT industry: An input-output analysis

The convergence of the information and communication technology (ICT) industry is ubiquitous phenomena, which can be classified from the supply/demand side or complementary/substitute relation. According to the classification, the paper measures the convergence of China's ICT sectors based on its 2002 input-output (IO) table, including five manufacturing sectors and two service sectors. Then, using IO table cross-entropy updating technique, the paper investigates the convergence evolution of four ICT manufacturing sectors from 1997 to 2002. The research finds the following conclusions. In 2002, the supply side convergence of manufacturing sectors was higher than that of service sectors, while service sectors featured a higher degree of the demand side convergence. The year of 2002 witnessed high complementary convergence between some China's ICT manufacturing and service sectors. During the period from 1997 to 2002, the supply side convergence dominated the convergence of China's ICT industry, while the demand-side convergence experienced little structural change.     

Total factor productivity enablers in the ICT industry: A cross-country firm-level analysis

Advancements in productivity in the digital economy constitute an important engine for economic growth. What drives productivity dynamics in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector? This study examines the productivity dynamics of ICT firms across countries from the perspective of corporate balance sheets. We study the effects of intangible assets and leverage on productivity growth using firm-level panel data from five industrialized countries. We find that intangible assets positively affect the total factor productivity in the ICT sector. The positive effect of intangible assets on total factor productivity growth is larger for ICT manufacturing firms than for ICT service firms. We also find that leverage has a positive relationship with total factor productivity development in the ICT sector. In addition, our empirical results substantiated that productivity is catching up to the technological frontier. Furthermore, larger firms and/or younger firms generally show higher total factor productivity growth than their peers. Economies of scale are more prominent in the ICT service sector than in the ICT manufacturing sector. Our findings contribute to the understanding of cross-country productivity dynamics in the ICT sector at the firm level in the digital economy.     

The globalization and stagnation of the ICT sectors in European countries: An input-output analysis

Recent studies of European countries indicate that the contribution of the ICT sectors to the regional economy is weakening and slowing economic growth. The present study investigates the contribution of the ICT sectors to economic performance in the European economies using Input–Output (IO) methodology. The results indicate that: (1) the multiplier effect of the ICT sectors on the rest of the economy declined significantly during the period 2000–2005 compared with 1995–2000; and (2) the decline in the output of the ICT sectors can be attributed to the loss of export advantages and technical change gains in the sectors. The results show an inability of the sectors to grasp the international market, most likely a consequence of the lack of anticipation of more rapid innovation in emerging countries.     

Induced effects of smart food/agri-systems in Japan: Towards a structural analysis of information technology

The Japanese government decided to promote “smart society” in the 5th Science and Technology Basic Plan. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the effects of information and communication technology (ICT) in smart society by input-output analysis using the food industry and agriculture as examples. We define food production and agricultural activities utilizing ICT as a smart food-agri system, and try to analyze the effect of such a system on the economy as a whole. As a result, we confirmed that such a system has a large economic ripple effect on information sectors. At the same time, through these analyses, (1) we redefine information goods and service sectors, (2) we describe the new management sectors that are using these goods and services, but are not currently independent businesses, and (3) we clarify new industrial structure that exists in “smart society” using ICT.     

How information and communication technology drives (routine and non-routine) jobs: Structural path and decomposition analysis for China

A comprehensive exploration into the routine/non-routine job implications of information and communication technology (ICT) is crucial for tackling routine-replacing technological change challenges in the digital era. To this end, we propose an integrated input-output (IO) analytical framework to detangle the intertwined relations between ICT and non-ICT sectors, and further incorporate structural path analysis (SPA) and structural decomposition analysis (SDA) to examine the extent to which and how ICT sub-sectors drive the formations and changes of embodied routine/non-routine jobs in ICT. An empirical study using China's national IO tables from World Input-Output Database and the matched occupational employment data derived from 2000 and 2010 Population Census is conducted. We find that China's ICT growth over 2000–2010 has not led to a decline in jobs, which still holds true for both ICT manufacturing and ICT service, as well as for routine/non-routine jobs. We also find an increase in the embodied employment share of non-routine relative to routine jobs. The typical paths “source sector → (intermediate sector) → ICT final demand” generate many routine/non-routine jobs, which are primarily lied in the zero and first rounds. The decomposition results show that the declining sectoral routine/non-routine job coefficients drives the decline of both ICT embodied routine and non-routine jobs (especially the former), which is completely offset by the rising final demand of ICT. The proposed integrated IO analytical framework could also be applied to other indicators and extended to multi-country/region analysis.     

ICT diffusion and production in ASEAN countries: Patterns,performance, and policy directions

ICT has become an increasingly crucial catalyst for economic development, but the transition to more sophisticated technologies is a challenging process requiring prudent vision, strategy, and policy. This paper investigates the dynamics of ASEAN countries’ performance on embracing the ICT revolution for development. Several findings stand out. First, ASEAN experienced a faster pace of convergence, compared to the rest of the world, in level of ICT diffusion over the past 10 years. Second, all ASEAN countries, including Singapore – the leading player, face increasing challenges in competing with income-level peers on ICT diffusion performance. ASEAN is a global hub of ICT hardware production and a fast-growing center of ICT services exports. In terms of revealed comparative advantage, ASEAN as an economy is strong in ICT hardware but remains weak in ICT services. The paper discusses policy insights drawn from the study and proposes a strategic policy framework to guide ASEAN’s concerted efforts to embrace the ICT revolution for development.     

ICT technologies in Europe: A study of technological diffusion and economic growth under network theory

The sector of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is one of the key instruments for the development of an economy. The literature emphasizes its capacity for both increasing productivity and generating new sources of income and wealth (5 and 20 among others). Traditionally studies on the ICT sector have focused on the analysis of its economic impact, but not on its capacity as a “bridge” for information and knowledge flows across the economic network. Following Burt's approach (1992) on structural holes, the organization of the economic network defines where and for whom new opportunities lie. The structural hole methodology allows to analyze the capacity of the ICT sector as an enabler of technological diffusion and innovation. The results show that the European ICT sector not only is important for its intermediary role in the flow of information across the economic network, but also for its low level of dependency on other sectors.     

基于引力模型的广度优先路径搜索算法在全球价值链位置测度中的应用

本文基于亚洲开发银行发布的国家间投入产出数据构建了全球产业价值链网络模型,从经济物理学视角对比了2000年和2019年世界各国产业部门与其上下游产业部门间的紧密程度,考察了产业部门在全球价值链上所处的相对位置。研究表明:(1)全球价值链网络发展整体呈异质性,但后向或前向产业关联中具有竞争优势可促进产业部门在另一侧的竞争优势提升;(2)2000~2019年,各国产业部门的后向和前向紧密度总体呈增长态势,但中国和美国在连接全球价值链中上游供给侧和下游需求侧的作用最为显著;(3)低技术含量、中高技术含量与公共和福利服务产业相对更加贴近上游供给侧,而基础类产业和商业服务类产业相对更加贴近下游需求侧。     

The impact of ICT patents on economic growth: An international evidence

This study aims to examine the impact of inventions, measured by the number of new patents, on economic growth. Specifically, we focus on patents in the ICT sector for a global sample of 43 economies, comprising 26 advanced and 17 emerging market economies in the period 1998 to 2016. We use a two-step system GMM to control for potential endogeneity in the data. Our results are threefold. First, total patents have mutually causal effects with economic growth, but there is no evidence of an impact of total patents on manufacturing sector growth. At the same time, ICT patents have a unidirectional causal impact on both, overall economic growth, and the growth of services and manufacturing. Second, the impact of total patents on economic growth is stronger in advanced economies. At the same time, ICT patents have a positive significant impact on the growth of advanced economies and a negative significant effect on the growth of emerging economies. Third, in the long-run, ICT patents have a positive significant impact on economic growth, while total patents do not.     

吉林省金融业推动高技术产业发展研究——基于产业关联的分析

本文利用吉林省2007年投入产出流量表,选取5个高技术产业部门,运用产业关联的角度对金融业与高技术产业进行关联分析,研究吉林省金融业与高技术产业之间的依存关系,探讨吉林省金融业对高技术产业发展的作用,从而为今后金融业有效地促进我省高技术产业的发展提供理论依据。     

Intra-Industry Growth Dynamics in the Greek Services Sector: Firm-Level Estimates for ICT-Producing,ICT-Using,and Non-ICT Industries

The stochastic patterns of firm growth are examined with the use of a data set of 4,975 firms surviving in the Greek services sector over the 1995–2001 period. The analysis first takes into account the intensity of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the services industries and then, through a system dynamic panel data technique, investigates how initial size and past growth influence firm growth. The classification of industries as three ICT-related groups provides interesting results at both the aggregated group level and the disaggregated industrial level. In general, Gibrat’s Law is accepted for firms in ICT intensive industries, while it is rejected in non-ICT industries.     

Technology policy for the knowledge economy: Public support to young ICT service firms

Public intervention in high-tech sectors is often advocated to resolve market imperfections that may possibly limit the viability of young high-tech enterprises. Although some European countries have adopted national government support policies that explicitly target this type of firm, in Italy and in other EU countries, there are no national support measures specifically designed for them. The paper focuses on the information and communication technologies (ICT) services sector in Italy. It aims to investigate whether both horizontal general-purpose direct support mechanisms at the national level and financial support measures provided by local administrative entities (which rarely have been specific to the ICT sector) permit an efficient allocation of public funds.     

Decomposition analysis of the telecommunications sector in Indonesia: What does the cellular era shed light on?

Indonesia is currently enjoying rapid development in the telecommunications sector despite the economy having been heavily dependent for almost four decades on the two largest sectors: the manufacturing industry and trade. The telecommunications sector has played an important role in stimulating economic growth in the country during the last few years, with an annual growth rate higher than that of other sectors. This contribution is supported to a great extent by the rapid diffusion of telephony, in particular cellular telephony, as the number of subscribers increased from just 2.1 million in 1999 to 170 million in 2011. Previous studies investigating the impact of the telecommunications sector on the economy aggregate the impact of the sectors on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) without further scrutiny of what sources of growth telecommunications has contributed. Hence, an interesting question arises as to whether the achievement of cellular diffusion is also followed by structural change in the telecommunications sector. That said, this study aims to decompose the output of telecommunications into several sources of growth: domestic final demand, export effect, import substitution effect and technological coefficient effect. A particular interest in this study is to compare the source of growth concerning domestic final demand and the technological coefficient effect. The main tool for analysis in this study is the Input–Output (IO) method, while the time series of the investigation covers the period 1975–2008, allowing comparison of structural changes in the telecommunications sector between the pre- and post-cellular eras. The study found that the coefficient multiplier of the telecommunications sector, which was approximately 1.8 during the 1980s, had decreased to only 1.3 by the end of 2008. Consequently, the final demand from the telecommunications sector contributed less to economic output in the late 2000s compared to the impact in the 1980. Moreover, the cellular era that started in the early 2000s also brought about a trend of changes in telecommunications output. While final demand remains very dominant, the technological coefficient effect has diminished as the source of telecommunications output. This finding indicates a lower ability of the telecommunications sector to build an inter-industry relationship with other sectors. A possible explanation for this result is the cellular uses which are much less related to business activities than that of fixed telephony dating back to the 1970s in Indonesia.     

Regulatory inertia versus ICT dynamics: The case of product innovations

This article conjectures that the legacy industry-specific regulation that has governed the telecommunications sector for a long time is in basic conflict with the dynamics and product innovations that characterize the modern information and communications technology (ICT) sector. Reasons for the failure of legacy regulation to promote product innovations are explained and proposals for alternatives, such as deregulation and regulatory reform are discussed. Both regulation and competition policy are more difficult for ICT than for other sectors. Therefore both, regulation and competition policy may need reforms in order to deal with new problems. The most drastic and most realistic alternative to legacy-type regulation remains deregulation and a move to competition policy. Symmetric regulation, smart regulation, quasi-Coasean approaches and subsidies all have some limited applicability to specific situations, but are all associated with complications that have to be resolved, while competition policy is a comprehensive alternative. Last-mile access and gatekeeper access are analyzed as two main areas of legacy regulation, which are in danger of being exported to other ICT areas. Such exports may negatively affect the dynamics of the ICT industry. Rather than being exported, legacy regulations should be reduced in order to enhance product innovations.     

Characterizing and comparing the evolution of the major global economies in information and communication technologies

In this paper, we characterise and compare status and evolution of the ICT industry of the six major global economies in ICT: China, the EU, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the USA. For this, we employ official data covering the period 2006–2009. Our analysis shows that although the EU is the largest economy of the world, it is the least ICT-specialised economy of all six major ICT economies. The USA is clearly the top global player in ICT in many respects. In both ICT Manufacturing and ICT Services it has the largest Value Added, BERD, BERD intensity and labour productivity. We further observe that China has, by far, the largest number of employees in both ICT Manufacturing and Services, while its level of ICT BERD remains low. China is however an emerging economy and economic indicators of its ICT sector have strongly grown from 2006 to 2009. Japan׳s ICT sector has a larger weight in the national economy than those of the USA, EU, and China. Moreover, it is the country from which the highest number of ICT patent applications originate. We also find that, of all six major global economies in ICT, Taiwan and Korea have the most ICT-specialised economies, with a strong orientation towards Manufacturing. Finally, we discuss selected results of our analysis and conclude the paper with tentative policy implications for the EU.     

最终需求侧中国工业环境效率测算及影响因素分解

本文基于WIOD数据库的数据,引入投入产出法测算了中国工业行业最终需求侧环境效率以及中 国分行业对工业总体环境效率变动的贡献度,对分行业环境效率变动进行了增加值系数效应 、中间需求效应、排放强度效应3种影响因素的SDA分解。得出结论：中国环境效率较低,改 善环境质量刻不容缓;食品、饮料和烟草制造业等5个行业环境效率相对较低;对整体效率 贡献率大的行业,有电气机械及器材制造业,通信设备计算机及其他电子设备制造业,交通 运输设备制造业;1995～2009年环境效率变动中排放强度贡献率最大,增加值系数和中间需 求贡献较小甚至为负。最后从行业层面提出了改善环境效率的政策建议。     

Competition reform and household welfare: A microsimulation analysis of the telecommunication sector in Ethiopia

This paper presents a novel simulation method for estimating the likely welfare effects of policy reforms aimed at increasing competition in strategic economic sectors such as mobile phone services. The proposed method relies on a partial equilibrium simulation approach and estimates the welfare impacts on current consumers and the potential welfare effects among new consumers brought into the market by changes in prices due to competition. This approach is applied to the information and communication technology (ICT) sector in Ethiopia, one of the three countries in the world with a monopoly in the market for mobile phone services. Based on household budget survey data for 2015/16 and departing from a baseline reform scenario that dilutes the market share of the state-owned monopoly to 45 percent, the simulation model estimates a 25.3 percent reduction in the price of mobile services and an increase in 5.7 million new users of mobile services. The predicted drop in prices and increased users would generate a combined relative welfare gain of 1.18 percent (1.09 percent among current users and 0.09 percent among new users), that could be translated into a 0.31 percentage point decline in the national poverty rate and equivalent to lifting about 275,000 people out of poverty. Alternative reform scenarios that dilute the market share of the monopoly to 75 percent and to 30 percent are expected to reduce poverty rate in 0.13 and 0.52 percentage points, respectively. The method proposed in this study represents a useful tool for promoting competition reforms in developing countries, particularly in sectors known for excluding significant segments of the population because of high consumer prices.     

ICT as a source of output and productivity growth in Finland

This paper analyses the impacts of information and communications technology on output and labour productivity growth in Finland in 1995–2005. Information and communications technology (ICT) accounted for 1.87 percentage points of the observed labour productivity growth at the average rate of 2.87 per cent. The contribution from increases in ICT capital intensity was 0.46 percentage points. The rest is attributed to multi-factor productivity growth in ICT production, especially in telecommunications production. The ongoing outsourcing of ICT production to low-wage countries provides a threat to productivity performance in the future. Policy makers should consider where the next wave of productivity growth will come from.     

Kazakhstan's wheat system: priorities, constraints, and future prospects

This paper provides an overview of Kazakhstan's wheat system following independence and identifies policies and constraints currently influencing the operation and development of the system. It also looks at the factors affecting production decisions, including the current operating environment, intra-sectoral linkages, and overall macroeconomic conditions and identifies several alternative sources of productivity growth that can potentially improve the current and future competitiveness of Kazakhstan's wheat producers. The paper emphasizes that the wheat system cannot operate in isolation from the rest of the economy. Regaining lost levels of productivity can only be accomplished with some level of coordinated policy linking the priorities of the wheat system with those of the agricultural sector and the economy as a whole.     

Welfare effects of the Telecommunication Reform in Mexico

The telecommunication sector in Mexico was highly concentrated until 2013. The sector was mostly composed by a dominant player, a rationed market (low density of services), a poor institutional design, high tariffs, and weak regulation agents. The Herfindahl-Hirschman (HHI) index was 5333 for mobile telephone and 7,029 for fixed telephone services—among the highest scores in the world. In order to promote competition in the sector, Congress approved a reform in 2013 to establish a new regulator empowered to impose asymmetrical rules in the case of the predominance of a single firm. A declaration of preponderance of the dominant player was issued, promoting free interconnection rates and the mandatory sharing of its passive and active infrastructure with the rest of the firms in the industry. The new institutional design led to increased competition in the sector, decreasing the mobile and fixed telephone prices while increasing the coverage and penetration of these services. In this article, an applied general equilibrium model for the Mexican economy is employed to assess the impact of the Telecommunication Reform in Mexico in the telephone sector, consumer welfare, and income distribution. The model is static, encompassing 10 types of consumers (rural and urban and the five income quintiles) and 40 sectors (of which four are disaggregate telecommunications industries). It assumes fixed wages and capital rental prices as well as idle resources. The main results indicate that the effects of the reform are not minor; the drop in telephone prices would reduce the general consumer price index by almost 2%, and the value added would increase by more than 3%, benefiting mainly households in the highest income quantiles.