IMPACT OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ON ECONOMIC GROWTH ON A GLOBAL SCALE

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of information and communication technology infrastructure on economic growth on a global scale. The final sample consisted of 122 countries, observed over a period of 13 years. Data were collected from the World Bank database and analyzed as a panel with threshold. This work innovates in the possibility of segmenting the country sample into three regimes according to the value of gross domestic product per capita. It is concluded that the information and communication technologies, indicated in this study by mobile mobile subscriptions and fixed broadband subscriptions, have a positive effect on economic growth, consequently playing a fundamental role in increasing the per capita income of the population and reducing poverty level in the countries. However, the determining factors that impact are different, according to each of the three threshold regimes presented, that is, the impact of broadband in countries of the first regime was not statistically significant, but in the countries of the second regime presented a higher coefficient in relation to the third regime countries. For mobile phone subscriptions, countries in the first regime had a greater impact compared to countries in the second and third regime.