The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century

This paper analyzes the impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) on economic growth in developing, emerging and developed countries. It is based on a sample of 59 countries for the period 1995 to 2010. Various panel data regressions confirm the positive relationship between ICT capital and GDP growth. The regressions for the subsamples of developing, emerging and developed countries do not reveal statistically significant differences of the output elasticity of ICT between these three country groups.

/pdf/ict-and-economic-growth-comparing-developing-emerging-and-2c4gqzfu5g.pdf

ICT and Economic Growth – Comparing Developing, Emerging and Developed Countries

https://ftp.zew.de/pub/zew-docs/dp/dp14117.pdf

ICT and economic growth : comparing developing, emerging and developed countries

Why do growth rates differ? This paper surveys the recent empirical literature on economic growth, starting with a discussion of stylized facts, data problems, and statistical methods. Six research questions are emphasized, drawing on growth and convergence research. In answering these questions, the paper argues that efficiency has grown at different rates across countries, casting doubt on neoclassical models in which technology is a public good. The latter half of the paper rounds up a variety of findings before providing answers to all six questions, including a short summary of how differences in growth rates arise.

The New Growth Evidence

https://cris.maastrichtuniversity.nl/ws/files/1376794/guid-158e421a-edc9-45fd-ac6d-1be674dec4cb-ASSET1.0

Has the Internet Fostered Inclusive Innovation in the Developing World

Defining firm competitiveness: A multidimensional framework

Based on 49,610 firm observations across 117 developing and emerging countries for 2006–2011, we show that their respective industries’ adoption of the Internet had positive spillover effects on firms’ productivity across world regions and economies at different development stages. We find that even firms facing financial constraints, frequent power outages, skills shortages, corruption and cumbersome labor regulations gained. Quantile regression results confirm these conclusions hold across different levels of productivity. They also show that the most productive firms benefited much more than the least productive firms. This suggests absorptive capacities are critical for the Internet to support firm development.

Overcoming Obstacles: The Internet's Contribution to Firm Development

Defining and measuring resilience has become a subject of interest in a world characterized by crises. Calls for empirical work on the microeconomic drivers of the resilience of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have drawn attention to the need for an enterprise resilience index. This paper fills this gap by proposing a multi-dimensional framework for firm resilience. Factor analysis of firm level data from surveys conducted in Cambodia and the Philippines before and during the COVID-19 crisis identifies a set of firm-level factors that drove successful SME performance during the pandemic. Structural Equation Modelling combines these factors into a firm level resilience index and confirms that the index is positively correlated with commonly used proxies of firm performance during crises, such as retaining employees. The insights from the analysis indicate that investment in certain dimensions of firm performance in good times can drive their resilience during crises. 

Valentina Rollo

Papers

Has the Internet Fostered Inclusive Innovation in the Developing World

Defining firm competitiveness: A multidimensional framework

Overcoming Obstacles: The Internet's Contribution to Firm Development

Drivers of SME Resilience in Southeast Asia during COVID-19