Do Poor Countries Really Need More IT?

Productivity differences across countries are often attributed to differences in technological capabilities. This paper asks whether there are systematic cross-country differences in the adoption of information technologies (IT). We document a positive correlation between IT use and income, which we...

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Main Authors:	Eden, Maya, Gaggl, Paul
Format:	Journal Article
Published:	Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank 2021
Subjects:	INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ICT ADOPTION INDUSTRIAL COMPOSITION ICT CAPITAL STOCK
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36070

id	okr-10986-36070
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-360702021-08-07T05:10:28Z Do Poor Countries Really Need More IT? Eden, Maya Gaggl, Paul INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ICT ADOPTION INDUSTRIAL COMPOSITION ICT CAPITAL STOCK Productivity differences across countries are often attributed to differences in technological capabilities. This paper asks whether there are systematic cross-country differences in the adoption of information technologies (IT). We document a positive correlation between IT use and income, which weakens over time. However, given that IT use is an endogenous outcome of both technological capabilities and the abundance of complementary factors of production, it tends to over-state the degree of cross-country differences in technology. We propose two novel calibration approaches to address this problem. After accounting for endogenous differences in industrial composition, we find that there is no systematic relationship between income and IT capabilities. 2021-08-06T14:04:37Z 2021-08-06T14:04:37Z 2020-02 Journal Article World Bank Economic Review 1564-698X http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36070 CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Journal Article
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
topic	INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ICT ADOPTION INDUSTRIAL COMPOSITION ICT CAPITAL STOCK
spellingShingle	INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ICT ADOPTION INDUSTRIAL COMPOSITION ICT CAPITAL STOCK Eden, Maya Gaggl, Paul Do Poor Countries Really Need More IT?
description	Productivity differences across countries are often attributed to differences in technological capabilities. This paper asks whether there are systematic cross-country differences in the adoption of information technologies (IT). We document a positive correlation between IT use and income, which weakens over time. However, given that IT use is an endogenous outcome of both technological capabilities and the abundance of complementary factors of production, it tends to over-state the degree of cross-country differences in technology. We propose two novel calibration approaches to address this problem. After accounting for endogenous differences in industrial composition, we find that there is no systematic relationship between income and IT capabilities.
format	Journal Article
author	Eden, Maya Gaggl, Paul
author_facet	Eden, Maya Gaggl, Paul
author_sort	Eden, Maya
title	Do Poor Countries Really Need More IT?
title_short	Do Poor Countries Really Need More IT?
title_full	Do Poor Countries Really Need More IT?
title_fullStr	Do Poor Countries Really Need More IT?
title_full_unstemmed	Do Poor Countries Really Need More IT?
title_sort	do poor countries really need more it?
publisher	Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank
publishDate	2021
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36070
_version_	1764484365066174464

Do Poor Countries Really Need More IT?

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