ICT Diffusion and Economic Growth: A Comparative Study Across Economies

The development in information and communication technology (ICT) has opened up many endless opportunities, enabling broad communication and easy access to knowledge and information. This paper aims to offer a discussion regarding the economic impact of ICT on 89 countries divided into 7 low-, 20 lower middle-, 19 upper middle- and 43 high income economies. Accordingly, it studies the impact of investment growth in ICT and non ICT assets on economic growth for a period 1990 to 2018, thereafter, it examines the economic impact of using three ICT infrastructure indicators in order to tests the effective usage of ICT investment in those economies for the period 2000 to 2018. The methodology of this research follows a deductive approach and uses a panel data estimation. The results show that ICT capital still plays a major role in the richest countries in the world, while there is no significant impact of ICT in the Upper middle and low income economies and weak significant in lower middle income economies. Regarding the impact of using ICT, the results for four income groups, indicate that the level of the ICT infrastructure effect varies according to the indicator studied and middle income economies are gaining more from the use of ICT infrastructure than high income economies with a positive and strong effect on economic growth.