The economic contribution of the "C" in ICT: evidence from OECD countries
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Published version
Author(s)
Goodridge, Peter
Haskel, Jonathan
Edquist, Harald
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Numerous studies have documented the contribution of ICT to growth. Less has been done on the contribution of communications technology, the “C” in ICT. We construct an international dataset of fourteen OECD countries and present contributions to growth for each ICT asset (IT hardware, CT equipment and software) using alternative ICT deflators. Using each country’s deflator we find that the contribution of CT capital deepening to productivity growth is lower in the EU than the US. Thus we ask: is that lower contribution due to a lower rate of CT investment or differing sources and methods for measurement of price change? We find that: (a) there are still considerable disparities in measures of ICT price change across countries; (b) in terms of growth-accounting, price harmonisation has a greater impact on the measured contributions of IT hardware and software in the EU relative to the US, than that of CT equipment; over 1996–2013, harmonising investment prices explains just 15% of the gap in the EU CT contribution relative to the US, compared to 25% for IT hardware; (c) over 1996–2013, CT capital deepening accounted for 0.11% pa (6% as a share) of labour productivity growth (LPG) in the US, compared to 0.03% pa (2.5% of LPG) in the EU-13 when using national accounts deflators; and (d) using OECD harmonised deflators, the figure for the EU-13 is raised to 0.04% pa (4% of LPG).
Date Issued
2019-12
Date Acceptance
2019-07-08
Citation
Journal of Comparative Economics, 2019, 47 (4), pp.867-880
ISSN
0147-5967
Publisher
Elsevier
Start Page
867
End Page
880
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Comparative Economics
Volume
47
Issue
4
Copyright Statement
© 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of Association for Comparative Economic Studies. This is an open access
article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY/4.0/).
article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY/4.0/).
License URL
Sponsor
Ericsson Enterprise AB
Engineering & Physical Science Research Council (E
Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC)
Ericsson Enterprise AB
Identifier
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147596719300629
Grant Number
9400628052
EP/K503733/1
ES/M500562/1
n/a
Subjects
Social Sciences
Economics
Business & Economics
Productivity
Telecommunications
Capital
Investment
Growth
Prices
Growth-accounting
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
UNITED-STATES
GROWTH
1990S
1402 Applied Economics
1499 Other Economics
Economics
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2019-07-18