# ICT Adoption and Stock Market Development: Empirical Evidence Using a Panel of African Countries
## 2 Review of Related Literature
### ICT Adoption and Stock Market Development
(2013) employed correlational and regression analysis techniques to study the impact of information technology development on stock market development in the world's leading capital markets. Their analysis showed that market capitalisation, turnover ratio and values of shares traded have a direct relationship with the ICT adoption components in the study, but they found no relationship between the ease of access to local markets and ICT development. [PERSON] (2013) sought to ascertain whether African stock markets can improve their informational efficiency by formally harmonising and integrating their operations on a common platform. The study showed that institutional deficiencies and openness to trade have a negative impact on economic growth. Further, the study documented that those African economies that were more open to international capital flows did not seem to grow faster than the rest. [PERSON] (2015) set out to investigate the effect of ICT adoption on financial markets by employing two leading stock exchange markets in Africa, namely the Nigerian and Johannesburg Stock Exchanges, as a unit of analysis. The findings of the study showed that ICT adoption had heterogeneous effects during the study periods. The use of the Internet had negative effects on the market indices, except for capitalisation. Further, [PERSON] (2016) explored the ICT and stock market nexus in Africa using evidence from Nigeria and South Africa. The study reported mixed findings. Specifically, the effect of a mobile telephone on all market indicators was found to be positive and significant. In a somewhat broader dimension to the study of ICT in relation to business and economic outcomes, [PERSON] and [PERSON] (2010) set out to determine the impact of the Nigeria stock market on socio-economic development for the 1981-2008 period. They found that the market indicators significantly enhanced economic growth. [PERSON] and [PERSON] (2021) explored the linkages between ICT penetration and the development and expansion of financial innovation on stock exchanges in ten European countries for the period from 2004 to 2019 and found that ICT spreads evenly in all the countries, laying solid foundations for the development of innovative financial products. Further, the results of their study documented that ICT positively influenced the diffusion of ETFs, regardless of the other possible determinants considered. [PERSON] and [PERSON] (2021) examined the causal relationship between ICT adoption and stock market development by employing a panel of 11 African stock exchanges for the period 2008-2017. They applied the panel ARDL bounds testing procedure to test for cointegration and examine the causal relationship between ICT adoption and stock market development. The results of their study documented that ICT adoption and stock market development were cointegrated in the long term. Further, the results of their study documented a bidirectional causal relationship (complementarity) between ICT adoption and stock market development. [PERSON] and [PERSON] (2021) also established a causal relationship running from financial freedom to stock market development. The review of the empirical studies leads us to distil the key findings as documented in Table 1. These are the basis of our variable selection in the research methodology section.