The ICT-Enabled Global Economic Crisis

This study examines one of the unintended consequences of ICT investments in developing economies. Although ICT has helped developing countries create links with the global marketplace, which in turn has stimulated economic growth during the good times, it has also synchronized these economies such that the global economic crisis has also affect them. This paper specifically studies the question of whether ICT investments, regardless of their inherent productivity enhancing benefits, also causes a country’s economic growth to become more highly correlated with global economic trends. Interestingly, we find that although ICT does cause a country to be more synchronized with the global economy, the country’s level of exports does not.