Telecommunications services and economic growth: Evidence from India

This paper estimates the growth contributions of telecom services by public and private sectors and distinguishes it from the information technology services. Socio-economic determinants of demand for telecom services are estimated for fixed and mobile phones in the framework of a Logit model and using data from a small-household sample survey in India. Estimation results show a significant negative impact of price and a positive impact of income variables; distinguish the importance of social caste, education level, nature of occupation, age of household head and family size between fixed and mobiles phones and offer evidence for substitutability of mobile phones for fixed phones. These results add to the empirical knowledge of socio-economic determinants of telecom demand and have implications for selective design of policies towards promotion of higher demand and attainment of higher economic growth by fixed and mobile services in India and other developing countries.     

ICT investment and GDP growth: Causality analysis for the case of Korea

This study investigated how investment in the industry of Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) has been interlocked with the GDP growth of South Korea. Based on seasonally-adjusted quarterly time-series data for the period between 1999 and 2016 available from the Korea Statistical Information Service, a Vector Error Correction model was applied for the analysis. The results revealed that ICT investment and GDP growth affected bi-directionally except for the short-run case in which only ICT investment affected GDP growth. The results explain that ICT investment plays an important role in the economic growth of South Korea in the long term; at the same time, investment size in the ICT industry increases as the economy grows. Without controlling any other factors, we found GDP increases by 0.4% when ICT investment increases by 1%. However, in the short term, only ICT leads to GDP growth. Therefore, the recent stagnation in ICT investment experienced in South Korea could negatively affect the economic growth of Korea in the short run, and hence, in the long-run, if it should become prolonged. The ICT investment strategy revealed from this study is especially useful to policy-makers who plan the economic growth in South Korea and other ICT-advanced countries because promoting ICT utilization across all sectors requires putting legal and policy mechanisms in place.     

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.