Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.1080/1331677X.2024.2310100
Economic growth and the proliferation of ICT infrastructures: which causes the other?
Atif Awad
Mohamed Albaity
Abstract
This study explored the causal association between Information
and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure development,
measured by an ICT index, and the economic growth of 42
African economies between 2000 and 2019. Whether ICT development
has contributed to real per capita GDP growth or ICT infrastructure
expansion has just been a consequence of growth in
real per capita GDP has been overlooked in prior studies concerning
Africa. The econometric techniques used to analyse the data
included robust second-generation tools to investigate cross-sectional
dependence, slope homogeneity, and panel causality. The
findings detected significant independence between the variables
across countries, the slope was heterogeneous, and there was a
long-run association between all of the economies in the sample.
Dumitrescu and Hurlin’s panel causality analysis indicated a unidirectional
causal association between per capita income and the
ICT index. The results also demonstrated that capital and employment
were the leading causes of per capita GDP growth. The
findings suggested that accelerating economic growth in developing
economies was essential to promoting ICT investment.
Keywords
Information and communications technology (ICT); per capita GDP growth; cross-sectional dependence; heterogeneous panel causality; Africa
Hrčak ID:
321742
URI
Publication date:
25.3.2024.
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