ICT Demand Behaviour: an International Comparison

Gilbert Cette () and J. Lopez

Documents de Travail from Banque de France

Abstract: This study aims to provide some empirical explanations for the gaps in ICT diffusion between industrialized countries, especially European countries vis-à-vis the United States. The panel data cover eleven OECD countries: Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. These annual macroeconomic data span the 1981-2005 period.The analysis provides some original results: (i) the impact on ICT diffusion of the level of education and market rigidities has changed over time. The correlation of ICT diffusion, positive with the level of education and negative with market rigidities, increased over time (in absolute terms) until the middle of the 1990s; (ii) In each country, the estimates show a decrease over time of the price-elasticity of demand for ICT (in absolute terms). More precisely, the elasticity of substitution of ICT vis-à-vis all production factors are close to or greater than 2 at the beginning of the 1980s and close to 1 in the middle of the 2000s; (iii) The estimates confirm the positive impact of the share of the population with a higher education and the negative impact of market rigidities on ICT diffusion. These effects are heightened when ICT diffusion is already substantial

Keywords: ICT; investment; factor demand; productivity. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E22 O47 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec and nep-mac
Date: 2009

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.banque-france.fr/gb/publications/telechar/ner/DT252.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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bfr:banfra:252

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Documents de Travail from Banque de France
Address: Banque de France 31 Rue Croix des Petits Champs LABOLOG - 49-1404 75049 PARIS
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Thierry Demoulin ().