Abstract
This paper studies a key driver of the demand for the products and services
of the global IT industry --- returns from IT investments. We estimate
an inter-country production function relating IT and non-IT inputs to GDP
output, on panel data from 36 countries over 1985-1993. We find significant
differences between developed and developing countries with respect to
their structure of returns from capital investments. For the developed
countries in the sample, returns to IT capital investments are estimated
to be positive and significant, while returns to non-IT capital investments
are not commensurate with relative factor shares. The situation is reversed
for the developing countries subsample, where returns to non-IT capital
are quite substantial, but those from IT capital investments are not statistically
significant. We estimate output growth contributions of IT and non-IT capital
and discuss the contrasting policy implications for capital investment
by developed and developing economies.