Authors
Menzie D Chinn, Robert W Fairlie
Publication date
2007/1/1
Journal
Oxford economic papers
Volume
59
Issue
1
Pages
16-44
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Description
To identify the determinants of cross-country disparities in personal computer and internet penetration, we examine a panel of 161 countries over the 1999–2001 period. Our candidate variables include economic variables (income per capita , years of schooling, illiteracy, trade openness), demographic variables (youth and aged dependency ratios, urbanization rate), infrastructure indicators (telephone density, electricity consumption), telecommunications pricing measures, and regulatory quality. With the exception of trade openness and the telecom pricing measures, these variables enter in as statistically significant in most specifications for computer use. A similar pattern holds true for internet use, except that telephone density and aged dependency matter less. The global digital divide is mainly—but by no means entirely—accounted for by income differentials. For computers, telephone …
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