Infrastructures and New Technologies as Sources of Spanish Economic Growth

The paper revises the impact of infrastructures and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on economic growth. It takes Spain as a reference case due to the accessibility to capital services estimates. The Spanish database allows the measurement of the impact on growth of three ICT assets (software, hardware and communication) and six different types of infrastructures (roads, railways, airports, ports, as well as urban and water infrastructures). It also allows the distinction between public and privately owned infrastructures. As a first step, the paper recommends the adjustment of the National Accounts (NA) figures, especially when the endogenous approach to compute the user cost is utilized. The rationale for the adjustment relies on the need to recognize explicitly the services provided by public capital, not fully included in NA.