Do Poor Countries Really Need More IT? : The Role of Relative Prices and Industrial Composition
Conventional wisdom suggests too little information and communication technologies (ICT) in poor countries. Indeed, within 70 countries at various levels of development, there is a positive relationship between income per capita and the capital sha...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2015
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2015/06/24738088/poor-countries-really-need-more-role-relative-prices-industrial-composition http://hdl.handle.net/10986/22229 |
| Summary: | Conventional wisdom suggests too little
information and communication technologies (ICT) in poor
countries. Indeed, within 70 countries at various levels of
development, there is a positive relationship between income
per capita and the capital share of ICT. While this
regularity is consistent with explanations based on
technology adoption lags and ICT-labor substitutability,
there is little empirical support for these hypotheses.
Instead, the paper establishes that this regularity can be
fully accounted for by (a) relatively higher ICT prices in
low-income countries and (b) industrial composition. |
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