Abstract :
The growing importance of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and egovernment has attracted the attention of policy makers who are committed to increase the GDP
per capita of a country. Therefore, this study investigates the growth effects of ICT and egovernment for a sample of eight South Asian economies over the period 1980-2016. To the best
of our knowledge, this is the first empirical study, which examines the relationship between
economic growth and ICT with a special emphasis on the role of ICT implementation in public
sector. In particular, we use diverse indicators of ICT to assess the robustness of empirical
findings. Moreover, the study employs instrumental estimation techniques 2SLS and GMM to
deal with the possible problem of endogeneity. The empirical findings of our study indicate that
growth effects of ICT as well as e-government are positive and significant in all models. Finally,
our study concludes that the South Asia region can greatly benefit from the implementation of
ICT infrastructure in general and in public sector in particular.
Keyword :
ICT, E-Government, Economic Growth, South Asia