THE EFFECT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN CAPITAL ON ECONOMIC GROWTH

In this paper we compare the impact of hardware, software, and communication equipment, widely referred to as information and communication technologies (ICT), on economic growth among the advanced industrialized countries. We use nonparametric techniques that allow us to estimate the output elasticities of ICT and human capital directly for each country and time period in our sample. Our results indicate that countries with high levels of ICT capital have high output elasticities of human capital. In addition, countries with high levels of human capital have high output elasticities of ICT, a result suggesting complementarity between the two. © Cambridge University Press 2010. 15 595 615 595-615