Regional Impact of ICT in Latin America: Evidence from Brazil
Literature identifies Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) as an enabler of productivity, and as a result, of economic growth. So far, most empirical research of economic impact of ICT has been performed either on firm-level data, or on a national-aggregate basis. In this paper a model is proposed to study the regional impact of ICT, intending to find out if better connectivity can help lagging regions inside a country to converge to the level of the rich ones. In particular, higher ICT endowment may present the potential for isolated regions to overcome its geographic disadvantages. The empirical analysis is estimated with Brazilian regional data, which allows differentiating the impact for different ICT measures, including broadband quality variation. Simulation cases are discussed for poorer regions. To conclude, some regulatory and policy implications are discussed.