ICT Leapfrogging and Economic Growth Among SAARC Economies: Evidence From Method of Moments Quantile Regression
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Taylor and Francis Group
Abstract
Description
ICT “leapfrogging” is when developing economies adopt the use of technology to jumpstart
their development agenda. This study positions the 2030 United Nations
Sustainable Development Goal 8 to test the leapfrogging hypothesis on eight SAARC
economies (Afghanistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri
Lanka) from 2000 to 2020. We examine if the hypothesis holds using an unbalanced
panel data on real per capita GDP and four ICT indicators (mobile phones, fixed
telephones, fixed broadband, and Internet users). We deploy panel spatial correlation
consistent (PSCC) and method of moments quantile regression (MM-QR) techniques.
The MM-QR offers more reliable results than PSCC because it takes into account the
conditional heterogeneity issues that are understated. The general consensus indicates
that ICT (individual indicators and composite index) exerts a statistically significant
positive effect on economic growth mostly at the 1% level. However, the MM-QR
reveals that: (1) the leapfrogging hypothesis holds for mobile phones and composite
index models; (2) the hypothesis holds only at the lower quantiles of fixed broadband
model; and (3) mobile phones show the largest increasing leapfrogging effect of
0.034%, 0.052%, 0.082%, and 0.099%, respectively. Policy recommendations are
discussed.
Keywords
HC Economic History and Conditions, HE Transportation and Communications, QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science