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This study develops an information and communication technology (ICT) penetration index and examines the link between ICT penetration and economic growth, trade openness and foreign direct investment in major trading nations from 2001 to 2018. The nations have been selected based on total trade volume. The ICT penetration index constructed for the major trading nations is based on trade of ICT goods and services, Internet use, mobile and broadband subscriptions using principal component analysis. Based on the new endogenous growth model, co-integration and panel regression are applied to determine the relationship between ICT penetration, trade openness and economic growth. A few other control variables such as financial development and foreign direct investment are also considered to assess the relationship between growth, trade openness and ICT penetration along with cross-country effects. It is seen that there exists a relationship between ICT penetration, economic growth, trade openness and foreign direct investment for the selected countries, with emerging and high-income countries showing a significant relationship between ICT penetration and growth, while countries are focusing on enhancing the role of ICT in trade.

International audience ; Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is a catalyst to enhance the level of community empowerment - with this motivation, this paper reports on a research study on "Community Empowerment Through ICTs: Evidence from Grassroots in Bangladesh and India". The evidence from an early benchmark study from Bangladesh shows that ICT penetration on its own is not proportionately related with community empowerment. Rather, ICT penetration with a precise application of ICT governance, strengthens community empowerment. The evidence also shows that if ICT penetration is high, but ICT governance is low, ICT does not remain as high a catalytic factor for community empowerment.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine how linkages between information and communication technology (ICT) and remittances affect the doing of business.Design/methodology/approachThe focus is on a panel of 49 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries for the period 2000–2012. The empirical evidence is based on the generalized method of moments.FindingsWhile the authors establish some appealing results in terms of net negative effects on constraints to the doing of business (i.e. time to start a business and time to pay taxes), some positive net effects are also apparent (i.e. number of start-up procedures, time to build a warehouse and time to register a property). The authors also establish ICT penetration thresholds at which the unconditional effect of remittances can be changed from positive to negative, notably: for the number of start-up procedures, an internet level of 9.00 penetration per 100 people is required, while for the time to build a warehouse, a mobile phone penetration level of 32.33 penetration per 100 people is essential. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to assess linkages between ICT, remittances and doing business in SSA.

The study investigates how openness influences information and communication technology (ICT) penetration for improved government quality in sub-Saharan Africa for the period 2000-2012. Openness is measured in terms of trade and financial globalisation whereas ICT is proxied with mobile phone and internet penetration rates. Ten bundled and unbundled governance indicators are used. The empirical evidence is based on Generalised Method of Moments with forward orthogonal deviations. The main findings are: First, financial openness has an edge over trade openness when combined with ICT to affect both economic and institutional governance. Second, mobile phones have an edge over internet penetration in complementing (i) trade openness for economic governance and (ii) financial openness for institutional governance. Third, net effects on political governance are consistently negative. Taken together, in the short-run, openness-driven ICT policies are more rewarding in terms of economic and institutional governance than political governance. Fourth, catch-up in governance is facilitated by the interaction between openness and ICT. Contributions of these findings to literature are discussed.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine how information and communication technology (ICT) influences openness to improve the conditions of doing business in sub-Saharan Africa.Design/methodology/approachThe data were collected for the period 2000-2012. ICT is proxied with internet and mobile phone penetration rates whereas openness is measured in terms of financial and trade globalisation. Ten indicators of doing business are used, namely: cost of business start-up procedures; procedure to enforce a contract; start-up procedures to register a business; time required to build a warehouse; time required to enforce a contract; time required to register a property; time required to start a business; time to export; time to prepare and pay taxes; and time to resolve an insolvency. The empirical evidence is based on generalised method of moments with forward orthogonal deviations.FindingsWhile the authors find substantial evidence that ICT complements openness to improve conditions for entrepreneurship, the effects are contingent on the dynamics of openness, ICT and entrepreneurship. Theoretical and practical policy implications are discussed.Originality/valueThe inquiry is based on two contemporary development concerns: the need for policy to leverage on the ICT penetration potential in the sub-region and the relevance of entrepreneurship in addressing associated issues of population growth such as unemployment.

Spatial diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is a global continuous accumulative process. But is it uniform or cyclic? Is it possible to skip some of its historical stages? What is a specific feature of the modern stage? Are there any patterns of ICTs interaction? And how do different ICT innovations work on globalization? Based on official statistics on ICTs penetration and traffic (print press, postal service, telegraph, telephone, radio, television, mobile phone, Internet) received from governments (including USA and Russia) and international organizations (ITU, UN, etc.) covering the period of the latest 20--150 years, graphs and maps have been generated and the following results have been obtained. The study has shown that ICTs diffusion is wave-like in the long term. As a rule, new innovation waves accelerate a decline of the old ones. But in some cases, when waves of different ICT generations overlap, a "resonance effect" appears caused by the inertness of ICT infrastructure. Detailed analysis of mobile telephony diffusion in correlation with fixed telephony and Internet revealed a fact that advanced ICTs development can make it possible for developing regions to skip certain stages of informatization and even implement an "overcoming" scenario of catching-up development. Specific feature of the modern stage is ICTs convergence: an integrated universal system of global digital communications is being developed on the Internet basis. It is an outcome of the modern globalization age, just as telegraph formed the 1st global information network in early globalization epoch. According to our research of different ICTs' traffic structure, each next generation of ICT innovations provides more international communicative openness (defined by a share of international traffic in a total traffic volume). In the modern world only 4% of the global telephone traffic is international, just 1% of the traditional postal mail crosses international borders. Another trend has been discovered for the Internet traffic, 46% of which is international, and this share is growing rapidly. Thus, when moving from traditional to the newest ICTs, a spatial scale of communication grows from mostly local to international, and international traffic is constantly migrating from traditional to the newest telecommunications. This study expands the understanding of ICTs diffusion process, presenting it in a long term and in an integrated manner, and its results could be important for informatization policies and strategies elaboration.