Internet access charge and economic activity

Abstract

This article investigates empirically the impacts of the internet access charge on economic activity using a cross-country analysis based on data from 76 countries for the year 1998–2001. The results show that the level of the Internet access charge has a significantly negative effect on the level of economic activity. In other words, a low Internet access charge of a country increases its economic activity.

Notes

¹ A list of the sample countries is not presented here for brevity but is available from the author upon request.

² Bassett and Koenker (1978) discuss the robustness properties of the LAD estimator and show that the estimator is -consistent and asymptotically normal. For instance, Yoo (2001) applied LAD method to estimating hedonic price models.

³ One can examine any structural differences between developed countries sample and developing countries sample in the model. Implementation of a statistical test for the structural difference cannot reject the null hypothesis that there is no significant gap between the results from developed countries sample and those from developing countries sample (the detailed results are omitted here due to space limitations).

⁴ Besides several other well-known reasons for caution in interpreting such results, it seems best to regard the parameter estimates as reflecting inter-country averages, and not to take the cross-section models too strictly in the sense of treating the estimates as applicable to each sample country.