出版社：Europäisches Institut für Internationale Wirtschaftsbeziehungen, Potsdam
摘要：We analyze the role of information & communication technology (ICT) with respect to
productivity growth and output growth in OECD countries where liberalization of tele-
communications has contributed to accelerating internet expansion in the late 1990s.
Based on the literature there is clear evidence for the US that both the ICT-producing
sector and the ICT-using sector have significantly contributed to an acceleration of
productivity and growth in the 1990s. The EU – in particular Germany, France, Italy
and Spain – are lagging behind the US which has established a firm global lead in
hardware and software. The internet will accelerate economic globalization and raises
the demand for skilled labor thereby creating pressure for relative wage adjustments in
OECD countries on the one hand; on the other hand investment in human capital and
retraining will have a higher social rate of return in the future while it is unclear that the
European model of the market economy is up to the new challenges. We also look into
some theoretical aspects of innovation, internet/telecommunications and growth. Em-
pirical evidence for Germany is presented that the use of telecommunications and the
internet positively contribute to output growth and employment growth. Moreover, we
report recent results from our gravity modeling of OECD trade showing that interna-
tional telecommunications contributes positively to higher trade volumes. Economic
policymakers in the EU face problems in optimally exploiting the growth opportunities
of ICT; in the whole OECD the well-known imperfections of information markets gen-
erally compound progress towards a dynamic knowledge society.
关键词：: Internet, Growth, Internationalization, Economic Policy, EU
