on economic growth, income inequality, and poverty across countries and over time.<sup>6</sup> Moreover, according to Pradhan et al. (2019), the growth effects from ICT adoption can be fostered if combined with other factors such as innovation and diffusion.

More recently, ICT adoption together with good telecommunications infrastructure have proven to be crucial at mitigating the economic losses during pandemic times (Katz et al., 2020). According to Ting et al. (2020), during the COVID-19 outbreak, ICT were being used for monitoring the spread of the virus, performing forecasting models of the new cases, educating individuals about the pandemic, engaging in public communication, and the creation of detection and diagnosis tools (e.g., those that use artificial intelligence (AI) tools). Previously, using data reported from 178 countries between 2000 to 2017, Katz et al. (2020) demonstrate that countries with better broadband connectivity minimized the economic losses caused by the 2003 SARS pandemic. They find that the economic effect of increasing connectivity by 1 percent is negligible for a country with a broadband level above 20 percent, but it is linked to a 13 percent offset in countries with a 10 percent broadband penetration. Another important role lies in the health care system through, for example, virtual clinics and medical “chat bots”. Budd et al. (2020) identify the role of ICT in epidemiological surveillance (through machine learning, digital surveys, and data collection and visualization), identification (via sensors for symptoms checking, Wi-Fi-based diagnostic devices, and machine learning), tracing (through smartphone apps and mobile phones’ GPS tracks), public communication (via social media, “chat bots”, and online search engines), and clinical care (e.g., telemedicine).

In conclusion, the findings presented in this section suggest that the adoption of ICT has a positive and significant impact on growth, although the extent and timing of the impact can vary depending on the level of development. A more comprehensive understanding of the benefits of ICT may be achieved by considering the adoption of emerging technologies, as Brynjolfsson et al. (2019) suggest that the greatest potential benefits from AI and IoT might still be yet to come and may be realized through complementary innovations.

# **3. Firm-level growth effects**

ICT can boost firm efficiency, increase productivity, reduce costs (e.g., automatization of administrative processes through online submissions), and enhance innovation and globalization (OECD, 2008). Firm productivity gains from ICT are significant enough to be compared to the productivity gains from electricity adoption. According to Welsum (2007), electric power generation, distribution, and use in the UK represented a 3.3 percent productivity boost by 1937, whereas the productivity boost from broadband is estimated at around 0.4-2.7 percent by 2015 and 0.8-5.7 percent by 2028.

> 6 According to the authors, parameter identification is achieved by making several assumptions about the distribution of the error term such as that the error term is serially uncorrelated, and that the explanatory variables are uncorrelated with unobserved country-specific effects.

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