Conference Paper
Technologie de l’information et de communication et croissance économique dans des pays de MENA et Africains: A l’épreuve des modèles non linéaires à seuil
No.
ERF29AC_91
Publisher
ERF
Date
May, 2023
This article examines, from a panel of 30 MENA and African countries over the period 1998 - 2020, the nature of the relationship between ICT development and economic growth. Our objective is to calculate thresholds from which the ICT development index and its three components (access, skills and use) induce changes in the growth dynamics of these countries. Thus, one of the main contributions of this study is to apply a Panel Smooth Transition Regression (PSTR) model developed by Gonzàlez et al. (2005) to give a precise indication of the optimal choice of ICT composition. The results show a threshold effect of the ICT development index (2.93) beyond which the diffusion of ICT achieves a significant effect on economic growth. Few African countries have met this condition. In addition, the results highlight that the effects of ICT development on economic growth are conditioned by thresholds of 2.89, 7.70 and 2.24 respectively for ICT access, use and skills. Sensitivity analyses and the GMM estimate show that these results are robust.
Authors
Mohamed Bouhari
Professor of Economics, Faculty of Economics and...