An index for cross-country analysis of ICT infrastructure and access

The purpose of the present article is to devise an index for measuring and analyzing the divide among countries in the area of information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure and access. Understanding the fact that there are many factors influencing the digital divide, this research is not intended to measure the digital divide in terms of different inequalities, but it rather attempts to take only one of the most important of these factors (maybe the most important of them) into consideration for measuring and analyzing divide between countries, that is, ICT infrastructure and access. In contrast to the majority of the indices in this context, the proposed index is built upon defining and conceptualizing ICT infrastructure and access. In addition, the index uses core ICT indicators on which the international community and experienced modelers have consensus that they measure the information society suitably. Therefore, the index can be exploited as the basis and standard for internationally comparable statistics in ICT infrastructure and access area. Moreover, it is the second index based on core ICT indicators after the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) that was developed by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in 2005. However, in the current article, using Data Mining methods, Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) (to impute missing data) and Multi-Stage Factor Analysis (FA) (for aggregating the indicators), many problems and limits of the existing indices, the DOI in particular, such as the lack of data for analyzing ICT infrastructure and access, use of equal weighting or experts’ opinions to aggregate the indicators, are avoided. Since this index is developed by statistical procedures, it is flexible, adaptable, and modifiable over time while it sustains its original structure. It is comprised of two main dimensions: ‘ICT access’ and ‘coverage of mobile and access tariffs’ and 10 indicators. Finally, comparing the proposed index with the other indices in this field and gross national income (GNI) per capita of 150 countries, this index is tested; then, it is utilized to measure and analyze the divide between countries in the two dimensions, different geographical areas, economic conditions, and levels of ICT infrastructure and access.     

Evolution and determinants of digital divide in Brazil (2005–2013)

During the last decades, the widespread growth of information and communication technologies (ICT) has posed incentives to broaden the participation of individuals in social, political and economic dimensions of life. However, utilization of ICT also involves access to technology and infrastructure, and acquisition of skills to deal with innovations and, thus, digital literacy is, primarily, a complementary good. The digital divide expresses inequalities in access and utilization of ICT among individuals and populations in different countries. The study adopts inequalities indexes of Internet access and mobile phone ownership to measure use of ICT goods, accounting for the digital divide in Brazil. The inequality indexes are also split according to main determinants using four nationally representative survey data from 2005 to 2013. Results indicate that the digital divide among individuals is decreasing quite fast among Brazilians over time. However, there is room for policies of mass access to ICT goods based on mobile Internet broadband access. In addition, digital illiteracy, evaluated by lack of education, is one of the main determinants of the digital divide in the country, especially among elderly individuals.     

ICT investment-specific technological change and productivity growth in Korea: Comparison of 1996–2005 and 2006–2015

This paper analyses the impact of information and communications technology (ICT) on the productivity growth in Korea with the dynamic general equilibrium (DGE) model including investment-specific technological change. According to the balanced growth path analysis, ICT investment-specific technological change accounts for 18.8% to labor productivity growth in 1995–2005, then 14.3% in 2006–2015, and the decline in the rate of ICT investment-specific technological change has contributed to the slow productivity growth since the mid-2000s. In cyclical fluctuations, ICT investment-specific technological shocks were significant in output variance in 1996–2005, but neutral technological shocks and non-ICT investment specific shocks became dominant in 2006–2015. In sum, it can be concluded that the impacts of ICT investment-specific technology have diminished in the growth path and cyclical fluctuations. The result that increased (decreased) ICT investment intensity with faster (slower) ICT investment-specific technological change lead to higher (lower) productivity growth indicates that Korea has been a case against the productivity paradox, and sustained technological progress in ICT and expansion of ICT usage could have boosted the productivity growth. Therefore, this study implies that facilitating ICT progress and ICT usage outside of the already well-performing ICT manufacturing can help Korean economy raise the productivity growth rate.     

Factors affecting ICT adoption among rural users: A case study of ICT Center in Iran

Rural ICT centers are the initiative of the third millennium and widen the accessibility horizons of information and Communication Technology among disadvantaged groups of societies, and play a significant role in rural development processes. Adoption of new technology in rural Iran has been the main challenge and focal point of all agricultural extension activities since the modernization era of the 1950s. Consequently the rapidly growing gap between urban and rural economy has reinforced the critical role of ICT in creating an equal society. Identifying the factors which foster adoption of ICT is among the important challenges of alleviating digital divide. ICT centers attract different groups within rural communities and create a forum for unprivileged rural settlers to learn about and to use computer and internet. This paper attempts to identify the factors influencing the adoption of ICT in rural Gharn Abad's ICT center of Golestan Province. The sample included 218 individuals, who were selected by stratified random sampling method. Survey method was used, and data was analyzed by correlation as well as multiple regression techniques. Based on the results, the existence of ICT center itself, with various funding sources, reinforced the adoption regardless of the users' economic status. At the same time, the other factors such as individual, social, the households' informative & communicative, as well as the innovation related factors were found influential. This case study could be used as a sample for planning, establishing, and developing the ICT centers in the other similar situations.     

Digital assemblages: evidence and theorising from the computerisation of the US residential real estate industry

We develop the concept of digital assemblages in order to advance current theorising on the ways in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) are helping to reshape work. The empirical setting is the US residential real estate industry—a ‘living laboratory’ for studying information‐intensive work and the adoption and uses of ICT. We find that real estate agents' uses of ICT are pervasive and suggest that agents now embed themselves more deeply into the transacting of real estate by actively supporting buyers and sellers, rather than acting primarily as information intermediaries. Building from this, we theorise that this ICT use can more coherently be understood as a ‘digital assemblage’ rather than a formal information system. Digital assemblages are characterised as distinct patterns of ICT collections that, in use, are functionally equivalent and structurally similar, relying on standardised and commodified ICT and are neither formally designed nor collectively governed.     

Exploring the structural effects of the ICT sector in the Greek economy: A quantitative approach based on input-output and network analysis

The aim of this paper is to present a quantification approach for the calculation of the ICT sector's structural effects in the economy, focusing on the case of Greece. We construct a composite sector using a hypothetical extraction methodology based on the most recent Greek input-output table and structural business statistics at the national level. Our framework builds on the formal definition of the ICT sector provided by OECD and includes two distinct sub-components, ICT manufacturing and ICT services. In the second stage of this study, we explore the production linkages among ICT services, ICT manufacturing and the rest of the Greek industries using input-output-based and network analysis-based metrics that build on the intermediate transactions of an expanded input-output table of the Greek economy that includes the two sectors. Our empirical findings suggest that the total ICT sector has a major contribution to the Greek economy in terms of GDP and employment, but this is driven mainly by the ICT services component. We further identify that ICT services are more integrated in the Greek production network compared to ICT manufacturing, but their production linkages are underperforming in terms of meaningful contribution to the activity of the rest of the sectors. These results reflect the low integration of digital technologies and can be further embedded in a discussion on the ICT deficiencies of the Greek economy and the need for targeted regulatory and financial interventions.     

The impact of regional ICT development on job quality of the employee in China

The paper matches the province-level ICT development with the micro-level data of the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), uses multiple indicators to measure ICT development and job quality, and investigates the impact of regional ICT development on job quality of the employee. The research conclusions are as follows: First of all, ICT development has a significant positive impact on job quality of the employee. After a series of robustness tests and dealing with endogeneity issues, the research conclusion continues to be valid. Second, when the job quality of the employee is poor, the promotion of ICT development is relatively strong. Third, ICT development has an indirect impact on job quality through the Internet awareness. Finally, ICT development has a relatively strong role in promoting job quality of women, older, non-agricultural, and medium-skill employees. From the policy perspective, in order to improve the job quality of the employee, we suggest promoting ICT development, narrowing the digital gap, increasing investment in education, and taking into account the different characteristics of employees.     

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.     

Disparities in ICT adoption: A multidimensional approach to study the cross-country digital divide

This paper presents a cross-country study on the determinants of information and communication technology (ICT) diffusion using multivariate analysis techniques to capture the relative and multidimensional character of digital divide. Using canonical correlation analysis, the differences detected between groups of countries both in terms of ICT patterns and in terms of the factors explaining each are compared. The results provide the ability to distinguish between different patterns of ICT adoption that can be explained primarily by variables associated with differences in development levels. In countries registering higher levels of ICT adoption, the digitalization pattern is explained by GDP, service sector, education, and governmental effectiveness. In contrast, in developing countries, population age and urban population are positively associated with the ICT adoption, while Internet costs impact negatively. The results might be useful in finding and implementing the most suitable telecommunication and development policies for each case.     

From aperture satellite to "Internet finance": Institutionalization of ICTs in China's financial sector since 1991

China's financial industries started the process of marketization only two decades ago, but by 2017 its financial technology or fin-tech sector had taken half of the global market. The exponential diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in Chinese financial contexts have generated new organizational structures and socio-political relations that have the capacity to change China's position in the world economy. Drawing upon the sociological concept of institutionalization, this paper examines how the Chinese state has integrated ICT diffusion in its formal policies and its informal rules in China's financial development since 1991. Further, it addresses the political and socio-economic consequences of these developments. Based on the analyses of government documents and sources, trade journals, and statistic data from business databases, this paper divides the Chinese institutionalization of financial technologies into three stages and identifies the primary actors and paradigms for ICT diffusions in each stage. ICT diffusion has been constitutive but also disruptive to the existing financial policies, instrumental to the commercialization of state-owned banks, and has gradually transformed into a set of formal and informal rules accepted by a network of professionals, corporations, and government agencies. The institutionalization of ICT diffusion has engendered the continuous adjustment of financial policies and propelled innovations in China's financial economy.     

ICT and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: Transmission channels and effects

Despite significant progress in the empirical analysis of the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) on economic growth, previous studies have not empirically examined the mechanisms by which ICT hinders or expands economic growth. The specific aim of the present study was to identify the transmission channels through which ICT contributes to economic growth. The examined channels included; openness, FDI inflows, education, domestic investment, political institution, and inflation. The study employed the panel-corrected standard errors (PCSE) and system two step system GMM techniques on a sample of 44 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) over the period 2004–2020. Using an ICT composite index, the causal mediation analysis identified that ICT contributed directly to growth, as proposed by the growth theories. Furthermore, the same analysis identified; domestic investment, openness, and education as crucial variables through which ICT penetration indirectly promoted per capita growth in the SSA region. The robustness of this result was verified using a variety of tools. The present findings suggested that the current efforts to expand ICTs in Sub-Saharan Africa should be continued since this sector has a considerable indirect impact on promoting economic growth.     

Digital divide and financial development in Africa

This paper analyses the influence of the digital divide on the new IMF financial development index on a panel of 34 African countries over the period 2005–2017. Using the instrumental variables technique, we arrive at the main result that ICT divide is a severe handicap for the financial systems development in Africa. The use of financial development sub-indices relating to financial institutions and financial markets, as well as their dimensions confirms the negative effect of the digital divide. Our result remains stable when we use alternative measures of financial development and ICT indicators. Furthermore, we found that the digital divide between countries is also a severe handicap for the financial development of countries lagging behind. On the other hand, countries with a technological lead or a digital dividend have relatively developed financial systems. Some recommendations have been suggested to promote digital penetration in Africa, as well as to improve the receptivity and flexibility of African financial systems.     

The effect of the digital economy on services exports competitiveness and ternary margins

In the era of the digital economy, improving the level of information and communications technology (ICT) development is an important measure for achieving the high-quality development of the services exports. This study constructs a comprehensive development index for the digital economy based on the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development Statistics Database (UCTADstat) to calculate the services exports competitiveness of 75 countries (regions) around the world from 2010 to 2019 and conducts ternary margin decomposition. The study empirically verifies that the digital economy promotes the competitiveness of services exports, not only driving intensive growth of quantity margin and price margin but also enhances the expansion growth of category margin. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the effect of the digital economy on improving low- and middle-income countries' services exports competitiveness and industries with low ICT intensity is more significant than that of high-income countries and high ICT-intensity industries. The impact of the digital economy on the ternary margin of countries’ different income levels and ICT-intensity sample groups exhibits differentiated estimation results. The conclusions of this study provide novel explanations regarding the effects of the digital economy in improving services exports competitiveness and new perspectives and evidence for strategic policymaking.     

Standard essential patents and global ICT value chains with a focus on the catching-up of China

Patents, standards and their combination, standard-essential patents (SEPs), are important in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector, in particular in mobile communication. We argue that SEPs are relevant in macroeconomic development and estimate the effect of a country's SEP portfolio on its value-added trade in global ICT value chains (GVC). We find that SEPs retain a higher share of value-adding domestically and that absorptive capacity is needed to join GVCs. China entered the SEP market late and is catching up rapidly. The trade effect of SEPs on China is different from that on matured economies because of the initially low value of its SEPs.     

Does ICT in schools affect residential adoption and adult utilization outside schools?

Policymakers around the world are considering whether to invest in putting information and communication technology (ICT) in schools, and how. While educational impact is likely to be the primary objective, such investments can also affect residential adoption and adult utilization of ICT in the communities, thereby reducing the digital divide. Using a census survey of Thailand for a time when ICT was available in roughly half of the nation’s schools, this study employs logistic regression and propensity score matching (PSM) to show that placing ICT in schools does have significant spill-over effects outside schools. This effect is larger for ICT in primary schools than secondary schools, and larger in schools with both Internet and computers than schools with just computers. The effects are observed in households of all incomes and educational levels. Considering these spill-over effects when allocating resources should lead to greater welfare gains for the amount of resources spent. The study also finds that there is a sizable portion of the adult population that chooses not to use ICT even after adopting this ICT in their households for their children, thereby eliminating any barriers to use related to cost and convenience. For this group, policy-makers should seek ways to decrease other impediments to ICT use, such as increasing ICT literacy through training.     

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.     

科技型中小企业研发创新的金融支付体系研究

研发创新是科技型中小企业的生存根基和发展动力源泉。如何利用有限的资金完成必要的研发创新任务,是科技型中小企业能否健康发展的关键。在当前的金融支付体系下,网络金融支付方式以其方便迅捷的服务、无纸化的订单管理、延迟支付、送货上门等特点,已经得到了很多中小企业的青睐。本文以金融支付的可用度、便捷度、安全度、可信度、服务度等为指标,构建了它们和支付采纳之间的结构方程。实证分析的结果表明,本文选取的各项指标都是决定科技型中小企业是否选择网络金融支付的关键。进而,本文给出了相应的政策建议。     

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.     

Reaping digital dividends: Digital inclusive finance and high-quality development of enterprises in China

The digital economy is progressively emerging as a new driving force for high-quality development in China and has been paving a new avenue for enterprise development through the progress of the digital inclusive finance (DIF) system. Under this paradigm of development, this research examines whether and how DIF exerts an influence on the China's economy which is currently experiencing a transition development of enterprises (HQDE). Using a sample of China's listed companies from 2011 to 2019, the results demonstrate that DIF has a significant favorable impact on HQDE. Furthermore, our analysis finds that reducing financial leverage and alleviating financial constraints are intermediary mechanisms of the effect. Moreover, the beneficial effect of DIF varies in terms of different regions, enterprise property rights, and industrial nature—it is observed to be more pronounced in the eastern region, non-state-owned enterprises, and tertiary industry enterprises. Our results provide empirical evidence that DIF enables enterprises to achieve high-quality development.     

China׳s information security standardization: Analysis from the perspective of technical barriers to trade principles

There have been many attempts for ICT standardization in China. Among them, this paper deals with information security standards. Although information security is often mentioned regarding China?s ICT standardization, it has been rarely examined per se. While most studies on China?s ICT standardization focus on economic aspects (e.g. increased bargaining power) or the government?s role, this paper draws on legal aspects. We select WAPI and ZUC for case studies, and examine their legal aspects, particularly from the perspective of WTO?s TBT (technical barriers to trade) principles. We have found that China?s standardization strategy becomes international-bound and, in fact, the manner in which the Chinese government handles standardization projects has become refined, flexible, and communicative with foreign stakeholders. We see that the changes are responses to the trade concerns raised by foreign stakeholders in various TBT Committee meetings and bilateral meetings. In addition, the Chinese government appears to become market-oriented even in the field of information security where it previously maintained a rigid stance on the ground of national security. This paper points out that the changes are attributed to growing external pressure from foreign governments and firms as well as to internal efforts toward innovation based on indigenous technology.