Does Information and Communication Technologies Sustain Economic Growth? The Underdeveloped and Developing Countries Case

This chapter tests the impact of ICT on economic growth for underdeveloped and developing countries by using a panel dataset for the period of 1995-2006. The authors first develop the theory of the relationship between ICT and economic growth. They show that ICT-capital has a positive effect both on long-run and transitional income per capita, if it is considered as a factor of production. Next, the authors estimate a panel data set with 131 underdeveloped and developing countries under the assumption that ICT is one of the determining factors of economic growth. They find that ICT has positive and significant effect on economic growth even after the use of some control variables.