Estimating effects of information and communication technology (ICT) on productivity of manufacturing industries in South Africa

M. Lefophane and Mmatlou Kalaba

No 284774, 2018 Annual Conference, September 25-27, Cape Town, South Africa from Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa (AEASA)

Abstract: The paper serves to examine whether the growth in labour productivity (LP) in the manufacturing sector following policy reforms after democracy can be attributed to ICT. To achieve this, we examine the link between ICT intensity and LP growth of 23 manufacturing industries for the period 1970-2016 and sub-periods 1970-1995 and 1996-2016. The industries are disaggregated into two groups which are namely �more ICT intensive� and �less ICT intensive� using the ICT intensity index. Four dummy variable regression models are applied to test for the relationship between ICT intensity of industries and LP growth. The findings suggest that LP growth of more ICT intensive industries accelerated more than that of their counterparts. The results underscore the need for policy measures to increase ICT use with the aim of improving LP performance of industries.

Keywords: ICT intensity; LP growth; manufacturing industries; Productivity; Analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-09-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse and nep-eff
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/284774/files/0074.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aeas18:284774

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.284774

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2018 Annual Conference, September 25-27, Cape Town, South Africa from Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa (AEASA) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().