The Impact of ICT Goods Imports on Economic Growth : Evidence from Asia-Pacific Countries

Purpose – This paper empirically investigates the relationship between Information and Communication Technology (ICT) goods imports and economic growth with a focus on the 13 Asia-Pacific economies during 2005-2016. In particular, this paper extends the study by breaking down the data of Asia-Pacific countries into High Income Countries (HICs) and Low Income Countries (LICs) according to the difference of income levels. Design/methodology – Our empirical model employs the standard growth model based on the Barro (1998)-type growth framework. Using static panel-data technique, we estimate the effect of ICT goods imports on economic growth in the 13 Asia-Pacific economies. In addition, we also estimate a difference of the ICT goods imports–economic growth link between HICs and LICs. Findings –The estimation results indicate that ICT goods import has a significant positive effect on economic growth, while ICT goods export has a positive but statistically insignificant effect on it. When we break down the panel data into HICs and LICs in order to gain further insight, ICT goods imports has been effective in spurring growth in only LICs but not in HICs. The other supplementary results show that both domestic investment (GCF) and life expectancy (LE) have a significantly positive impact on economic growth in both HICs and LICs. Originality/value – The main findings of the paper suggest that ICT goods imports has a positive effect on economic growth in only LICs but not in HICs. This result supports the so-called ‘leapfrogging’ hypothesis through ICT goods imports in the Asia-Pacific countries, in which LICs are gaining more from ICT goods imports than HICs