Existing studies aimed at explaining cross-country differences in technological capabilities among developing countries have tended to use crude and unrealistic proxies—such as expenditure on R&D or the number of registered patents—which bear little or no relation to the findings from...

The literature on ICT and development is almost totally disassociated from the earlier, more general work on technology and development. The former, moreover, is almost totally devoid of analytical categories that can bring some order to a vast, descriptive literature. The purpose of this paper,...

Because some developing countries have adopted the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project at the national level and others are planning to do so, the macroimplications of this idea can no longer be ignored. Accordingly, I examine whether or not full adoption of OLPC computers in primary schools...

This paper is concerned with the scope for developing countries to benefit from the Internet in non-synchronous ways that is, in cases where some delay is involved in the delivery of information, as compared with the real-time alternative used in developed countries. The first part of the paper...

Though there are a number of mechanisms through which information technology promotes globalization, what is common to these mechanisms is that they can all be interpreted as a reduction in transactions costs between the trading partners. Thus interpreted, we show that developing countries...

The prevalent approach to providing the Internet in rural areas of developing countries takes the form of ‘telecentres’, where, it is assumed that ‘access to’ this technology will confer benefits on the target groups. The purpose of this paper is to show that this approach diverts...

If information technology (IT) is to have a mass impact on those living in rural areas of developing countries, it cannot occur on the basis of ownership (as it does in rich countries). Instead, it is to institutional innovations in and for developing countries, that one needs to look at. Two...