Abstract
The impact of information and communications technology (ICT) on economic performance has been an interesting issue in economics. There are at least three key points that can be learnt from the previous literatures regarding ICT and country’s economic performance. First, more developed countries are expected to benefit greater than less developed countries. Second, the impact of ICT will depend on the intensity of ICT utilization. Third, the size and structure of ICT sector of country’s economy does matter. The main contribution of this paper is to evaluate those three points by conducting comparative analysis based on Input–output (I-O) Table from four ASEAN Member States, namely Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. ASEAN is used because it is one of the regional associations that have a large income gap among its members. The results suggest that more developed countries (which are measured by income per capita) do not always benefit greater than less developed countries from ICT development. The magnitude of ICT impact on the economy depends on the intensity of ICT utilization and the structure of ICT sector.
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Notes
Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom
Eleven OECD countries plus Argentina, China, Columbia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Thailand and Venezuela.
Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) consists of 10 countries: Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Indonesia (Statistics Indonesia/BPS); Malaysia (Department of Statistics); Thailand (Office of the National Economic and Social Development Board/NESB); Singapore (Singapore Department of Statistics).
The detailed definition of ICT sectors and ICT products can be found in OECD (2009) “Information Economy Product Definitions Based on the Central Product Classification (Version 2)”.
In this paragraph, the percentages are measured as sectoral expenditure on ICT products divided by total ICT products as intermediate input.
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I gratefully acknowledge comments by participants from the 1st Workshop and 2nd Workshop Digital EU-Integration and Globalisation; I also thank to Prof. Dr. Paul. J.J Welfens for his kind support and comments. Any mistakes that remain are my own.
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Irawan, T. ICT and economic development: comparing ASEAN member states. Int Econ Econ Policy 11, 97–114 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10368-013-0248-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10368-013-0248-5