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on Information and Communication Technologies |
| By: | Demir, Banu; Javorcik, Beata; Panigrahi, Piyush |
| Abstract: | This paper explores how improved internet infrastructure impacts supply chains and economic activity, focusing on Türkiye. Using the expansion of fiber-optic networks and firm-to-firm transaction data, we find that better connectivity shifts input sourcing to well-connected regions and diversifies supplier networks. We estimate a spatial equilibrium model with endogenous network formation and rational inattention and find that high-speed internet reduced information acquisition and communication costs. Enhanced connectivity increased real income by 2.2% in the median province. Our findings underscore the importance of digital infrastructure investments in fostering economic growth by improving supply chain efficiency and broadening firms’ access to suppliers. |
| Date: | 2025–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19827 |
| By: | Patrick Healy; Simon D. Angus; Paul Raschky; Klaus Ackermann; Nathan Lane; Weijia Li; Cynthia Huang |
| Abstract: | Digital State Capacity is the ability of governments to deploy ICT infrastructure and information systems to implement policy. This paper introduces a new measure of government ICT capacity based on an observable stock of deployable public-sector network infrastructure: public IPv4 address space held by government organisations. These address holdings are key inputs into digital administration because they support internet-facing systems, networked information exchange, and coordination across agencies and functions. The core panel covers approximately 150, 000 country-entity records classified as government across more than 150 countries from 2019 to 2024 and can be disaggregated by administrative level and government function. In the 2019 to 2024 Admin-1 panel, government IP holdings are observed in 1, 681 subnational regions across all years. We validate the measure at the cross-country and subnational levels and apply it to government tasks related to corruption control and vaccination rollout. In illustrative country-year analysis, higher Digital State Capacity is associated with higher-quality governance and public-service outcomes in the expected directions, including lower measured corruption and higher vaccination coverage. These associations are descriptive; they demonstrate the empirical relevance of the measure and are not causal estimates. |
| Keywords: | state capacity, informational state capacity, digital government, public-sector ICT infrastructure, bureaucratic capacity, subnational government, e-government, IPv4 address space |
| JEL: | H11 H83 D73 O33 O38 |
| Date: | 2026–08–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ajr:sodwps:paper_1786090567877_919 |
| By: | Olivier Arsene (EESC-GEM - Grenoble Ecole de Management); Claudio Vitari (CERGAM - Centre d'Études et de Recherche en Gestion d'Aix-Marseille - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - UTLN - Université de Toulon) |
| Abstract: | Background:Healthcare professionals in France are exposed to increasing job demands, including clinical workload, administrative burden, and work-life intrusion, all of which contribute to elevated strain and burnout. Health Information Technologies are expected to act as valuable job resources by improving efficiency and supporting task coordination. Yet little is known about whether HITs are associated with a weaker relationship between job demands and strain, and whether their perceived usefulness declines when workload becomes excessive. This study applies the Job Demands-Resources model to outpatient healthcare professionals to examine how job |
| Keywords: | Strain, French Healthcare, Perceived Usefulness, Job Demand-Resource, Health IT |
| Date: | 2026–05–29 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05686749 |
| By: | Motloutsi, Veronica; Viriri, Serestina; Samuels, Alexander |
| Abstract: | Digital transformation is widely presented as a pathway to financial inclusion, entrepreneurial growth, and sustainable development, yet its developmental effects remain uneven in emerging economies. This tension is particularly evident in South Africa’s fintech entrepreneurial ecosystem, where a relatively sophisticated financial sector and expanding digital innovation coexist with persistent inequality, skills shortages, fragmented institutional support, and regulatory complexity. Existing digital transformation research has largely focused on firm-level adoption, business model innovation, and technology-enabled change, offering limited explanation of how broader ecosystem conditions shape sustainable development outcomes in contexts such as South Africa. In response, this article develops a Critical Realist Digital Transformation Capacity Framework to explain how digital transformation may contribute to sustainable development within South Africa’s fintech entrepreneurial ecosystem. Drawing on digital transformation theory, capacity development theory, entrepreneurial ecosystem scholarship, and critical realism, the article argues that digital transformation is not a self-executing technological process but a contextually mediated and capacity-dependent phenomenon. It identifies institutional capacity, human capacity, and policy capacity as the key generative mechanisms through which digital technologies may support financial inclusion, ecosystem resilience, entrepreneurial participation, and broader economic development. By integrating these literatures, the article extends global information technology scholarship beyond technology-centric and firm-level accounts and offers an African-centred, mechanism-based explanation of digitally enabled development. The framework provides a conceptual foundation for future empirical research and a diagnostic lens for policymakers, regulators, and ecosystem actors in South Africa and other emerging-market settings. The study contributes to information systems theory by introducing Digital Transformation Capacity as a higher-order theoretical construct that explains how institutional, human, and policy capacities mediate the relationship between digital transformation and sustainable development. |
| Date: | 2026–07–22 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:87vbp_v2 |
| By: | Poquiz, John Lourenze |
| Abstract: | This study introduces a novel methodology to estimate the depreciation of intangible assets, specifically focusing on software and creative originals, using data from Google Search Volume (GSV), commonly referred to as Google Trends. Depreciation, in this context, is understood as a manifestation of obsolescence. As intangible assets become obsolete, their ability to generate revenues diminishes relative to the time of their introduction. GSV provides a practical means to gauge the popularity of products generated by these assets, as a surge in internet searches indicates their relevance. The decline in search activity over time is directly associated with the concept of obsolescence, aligning with economic depreciation principles. In our analysis, we employ Poisson Pseudo-Maximum-Likelihood (PPML) and negative binomial regressions to estimate the rate of decline of GSV results for a sample of software and movie titles. Our findings reveal a depreciation rate for s oftware originals ranging from 13.4 to 19.4 percent. This is lower than the estimates employed by statistical agencies, which is around 20 to 25 percent. Estimates for movies are comparable to estimates by statistical agencies, notably the US and Germany. We also find that if we apply the depreciation rates we generated from this methodology to the estimation of capital stock, TFP growth for the Information and Communication industry would be higher for non-crisis years, particularly from 1996 to early 2008, and again from 2011 to the end of 2016. |
| Keywords: | Intangibles; depreciation; SNA; capital stock; Google Trends |
| JEL: | C80 E01 E22 O34 O47 |
| Date: | 2025–02–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eoe:escoed:escoe-dp-2025-02 |
| By: | Darougheh, Saman; Faccini, Renato; Melosi, Leonardo; Villa, Alessandro |
| Abstract: | We develop a model where heterogeneous agents choose whether to engage in on-the-job search (OJS) to improve labor income. The model accounts for untargeted microdata patterns: fiscal incentives affect job-to-job mobility and wage growth of stayers—but not leavers—across the income distribution, pointing to OJS as a key driver of labor costs. Calibrated to micro and macro moments, the model shows that OJS cost shocks significantly affect real activity and inflation. The permanent decline in OJS costs—driven by ICT and AI-based tools—offers a novel explanation for the weakening of the unemployment-inflation relationship documented in empirical studies. |
| JEL: | E31 J64 E12 |
| Date: | 2024–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19795 |
| By: | Jiao, Yang; Tian, Lin |
| Abstract: | This paper explores how internet technology advancements drive cross-city collaborations (or "geographic fragmentation"). We use a spatial equilibrium model with cross-city production and skill heterogeneity to analyze the effects of reduced communication costs on domestic fragmentation. Our model suggests that better internet leads to increased production fragmentation, concentrating skilled workers in larger cities and reducing their numbers in smaller ones. Empirical validation using a novel instrumental variable approach confirms these predictions. Our calibrated model indicates that internet advancements have increased real wages for both high- and low-skill workers, with welfare improvements partly due to spatial reorganization from enhanced production fragmentation. |
| Keywords: | Internet connectivity |
| JEL: | R10 |
| Date: | 2024–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19661 |
| By: | Yue Ma; Tianli Feng; Robert W. Fairlie; Chengfang Liu; Prashant Loyalka; Scott Rozelle; Xinwu Zhang |
| Abstract: | The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) has heightened interest in personalizing computer assisted learning (CAL) programs to tailor their instruction to individual students. Despite the proliferation of AI-driven CAL programs, evidence for their effectiveness remains limited. We present findings from a large-scale field experiment in rural China examining whether an AI-driven personalized CAL program improves student achievement. We randomly assign 8, 647 students from 315 primary school classes to one of three treatment arms: (i) AI-CAL, (ii) non-personalized CAL (active control), and (iii) non-CAL educational activities (pure control). Results indicate that AI-CAL does not significantly improve achievement, with estimates precise enough to rule out non-trivial positive effects. This finding holds across the difficulty of assessment items and across the baseline achievement of students. The finding that R-CAL modestly benefits students in the middle ability tercile while AI-CAL shows no impact on students in any ability tercile suggests caution when projecting the promise of scaling adaptive AI-driven educational technologies in under-resourced settings. |
| Keywords: | AI, education technology, computer assisted learning, adaptive learning, ICT, RCT, rural China |
| JEL: | I21 O15 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12837 |
| By: | Barwick, Panle; Chen, Siyu; Fu, Chao; Li, Teng |
| Abstract: | Concerns about excessive mobile phone use among youth are mounting. We present estimates of both behavioral and contextual peer effects, along with comprehensive evidence on how students' own and their peers' app usage affect academic performance, physical health, and labor market outcomes. Our analysis draws on administrative data from a Chinese university covering three student cohorts over four years. We exploit random roommate assignments, differential exposure to a policy shock (gaming restrictions for minors), and differential exposure to a discrete event (the introduction of a blockbuster video game) for identification. App usage is contagious: a one s.d. increase in roommates' in-college app usage raises own usage by 5.8%. High app usage is harmful across all measured outcomes. A one s.d. increase in app usage reduces GPAs by 36.2% of a within-cohort-major s.d. and lowers wages by 2.3%. Roommates' app usage reduces a student's GPAs and wages through both disruptions and behavioral spillovers, generating a total negative effect that exceeds half the magnitude of the impact from the student's own app usage. Extending China's three-hour-per-week gaming restriction for minors to college students would boost their initial wages by 0.9%. High-frequency GPS and app usage data show that heavy app users spend less time in study halls, are more frequently late or absent from class, and get less sleep. |
| JEL: | E24 D91 I23 L82 L86 |
| Date: | 2024–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19579 |
| By: | Nkhoma, Nomore; Chen, Xiaonan |
| Abstract: | Digital technologies are widely promoted as tools for raising smallholder agricultural productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa, yet existing causal evidence is geographically fragmented and rarely accounts for high-dimensional selection into adoption, leaving the magnitude of productivity returns uncertain. This study estimates the causal effect of mobile phone ownership on both farm production value and maize yield using the Malawi Integrated Household Survey (IHS5, 2019-2020) and a Double Machine Learning (DML) framework. We implement partially linear regression (PLR) and interactive regression models (IRM) with a suite of machine learners to flexibly control for high-dimensional confounders. Our stacked DML estimates indicate that mobile phone ownership raises log farm production value by 10.7 percent and log maize yield by 5.9 percent, with consistent results across learners and IV specifications using a leave-one-out community mobile ownership instrument. Pathway analysis identifies fertilizer use and formal credit access as the dominant mechanisms, with secondary contributions from ICT-based extension and improved seed adoption. Productivity gains are concentrated among youth-headed households and in the Centre and Southern regions, where complementary market infrastructure amplifies the returns to digital connectivity. We contribute new causal evidence that mobile phones function as productive agricultural infrastructure and document that the yield and production channels operate through distinct but reinforcing pathways. |
| Keywords: | Agricultural and Food Policy |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404385 |
| By: | Gruber, Anja; Van Sandt, Anders; Loveridge, Scott; Carpenter, Craig |
| Abstract: | Compared to metropolitan residents, rural residents face a disparity in access to local mental health providers that is even larger than for other health care services. Telehealth appears to be a natural solution to this issue: Patients should be able to more easily access providers from metro areas, reducing disparities in access to mental health care. In this paper, we consider the flip side of this argument, which has not yet received enough attention. Mental health providers, especially in areas where demand for their services exceeds supply, become more easily able to access patients and therefore may become more selective. We show evidence that access to telehealth services is 8-9 percentage points lower for non-metro residents, even after accounting for potential differences in stigma and internet access. We also show that self-payment is a significant predictor of telehealth utilization in mental health and provide suggestive evidence that the increase of telehealth in mental health treatments has coincided with reduced access to mental health care for publicly insured patients, despite growth in provider numbers across counties. We caution that expansions in telehealth need to be combined with policies to promote equitable reimbursement and reduce barriers for independent providers to bill public and private insurance. |
| Keywords: | Health Economics and Policy |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404595 |
| By: | Cui, Xiurui; Malone, Trey |
| Abstract: | Industry 4.0 technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and blockchain, promise substantial efficiency and resilience gains for agribusiness supply chains, but their network-dependent value hinges on coordinated adoption. Using primary survey data from 281 agribusiness professionals and a complementarity-based Monte Carlo simulation of a 15-node, five-stage supply chain, we examine how adoption heterogeneity and supply chain position shape system-level technology value. Adoption rates vary sharply by technology (AI: 39.1%; IoT: 29.7%; Blockchain: 6.3%) and by market scope, with multinational firms adopting at nearly twice the rate of local firms. A dynamic model with neighbor-dependent transition probabilities reveals that coordination gains peak at 22–31% during the critical diffusion window (period 5) before narrowing as independent diffusion eventually converges. Technology diffusion in the agri-food supply chain follows a sequential, midstream-led pattern. Processors face the strongest incentive to adopt technologies that enhance traceability and logistics coordination, and lead in adoption. Adoption then spreads downstream before propagating upstream through network interactions, where the production stage exhibits the greatest lag. This asymmetric diffusion pattern highlights how coordination mechanisms, working through the unique structure of the agri-food supply chain, shape the pace and distribution of transformation gains. |
| Keywords: | Productivity Analysis, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404713 |