EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Investment in Information and Communication Technologies: an Empirical Analysis

Gilbert Cette, Jimmy Lopez () and P-A. Noual

Working papers from Banque de France

Abstract: Recent economic literature has identified sizeable differences across industrialised countries in the diffusion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) throughout the production structure. This paper addresses the question of whether differences in the price elasticity of demand for ICTs could explain why Europe lags behind the United States in terms of ICT diffusion. We use annual macroeconomic data covering the period 1975-2001 and consider five countries: France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States. Europe's lag in ICT diffusion does not appear to be linked to cross-country differences in the price elasticity of demand for ICT products. Our results suggest that at least part of the gap in ICT diffusion should be ascribed to more structural cross-country differences. The estimated value of the price-elasticity of computer hardware and software is generally lower than -1 which, given the decline in the relative price of these products, explains the increase in their share of investment expenditure and GDP. This situation is characteristic of a diffusion stage and is necessarily temporary.

Keywords: ICT; Investment; Factor demand (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E22 O47 O57 R34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 8 pages
Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://publications.banque-france.fr/sites/defaul ... g-paper_116_2004.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Investment in ICTs: an empirical analysis (2005) Downloads
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:bfr:banfra:116

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working papers from Banque de France Banque de France 31 Rue Croix des Petits Champs LABOLOG - 49-1404 75049 PARIS. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael brassart ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-22
Handle: RePEc:bfr:banfra:116