Searching for the Determinants of IT Investment: Panel Data Evidence on European Countries

The aim of this paper is to identify the stage of IT adoption in individual European economies, and to analyse the determinants of IT investment in a panel of EU countries. We first analyse the dynamics of IT investment expenditure in 15 European countries from 1992 until 2001 and, by means of a cluster analysis, we draw a picture of IT diffusion in Europe. By clustering the European countries according to their shares of IT spending over GDP, we identify three fairly stable groups of fast, medium and slow adopters. We then build an econometric equation of the determinants of IT investment to be estimated with panel data for five European economies over 1980-2001. We consider both aggregate IT investment, and investment in hardware or software taken alone. Financial conditions, income growth and comparative advantage turn out to affect IT investment, but we find that the determinants of hardware investment only partially overlap with those of software.