UTICAJ IKT-A NA GLOBALNU I LOKALNE EKONOMIJE

The ICT supply side provides the equipment, software and services that are used productively in investments across the economy as well as in consumption. This section reviews recent evidence on the economy-wide diffusion and use of ICTs and examines three ways in which ICTs contribute to economic performance: i) their role in aggregate investment; ii) their contribution to productivity growth in ICT-producing and ICT-using sectors; and iii) their role at firm level. There is evidence that the effective use of ICTs contributes to growth at sectoral level (OECD, 2003d; O’Mahony and van Ark, 2004, who also examine differences in productivity performance between EU countries and the United States). Increasingly, firm-level evidence also suggests that effective diffusion and use of ICTs are key factors in broad-based growth when combined with effective human resource strategies involving education and training and organisational change.

Investment in ICTs

ICTs account for an increasing share of investment because of growing demand for ICT applications and rapid price declines. Between 1980 and 2001, the share of ICT investment in total non-residential gross fixed capital formation at least doubled and in some cases grew by a factor of four (Figure 1.35). In a group of 18 countries for which comparable and harmonised OECD data are available, the overall share rose from 3-5% to 15% in 1980 to over 10% in all countries and close to 30% in the United States in 2001.

Thus growth in total private investment has been increasingly driven by ICT investment, particularly in countries with a high share of ICTs in total investment. However, the pace of and impact on GDP growth ranged between 0.3 and 0.8 percentage points of growth in GDP in the 1995-2001 period (see OECD, 2003d, for a detailed discussion). Furthermore software has been a major source of ICT’s rising share of investment in GDP.11 Software investment accounted for at least one-fifth of the overall contribution of ICT capital investment to output growth and was the major contributor in Denmark, Sweden and Finland in the 1995-2001 period. On the other hand, countries where non-ICT capital investment remained the major contributor to growth include Ireland, Spain and Portugal, countries that are growing rapidly, transforming their economies and making modernisation investments in non-ICT infrastructure and structural change.

Figure 1.35. Share of ICT investment in total non-residential gross fixed capital formation, 1980-2001 Percentages