Investments in ICT- capital and productivity of SMEs empirical evidence from Cameroon

Despite the large body of firm-level analyses devoted to the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)-capital on productivity, a robust empirical evidence for developing countries is still needed. Starting from a commonly employed production function framework, the aim of this paper is to provide robust estimates of the impact of ICT on Cameroonian firms’ productivity using a balanced panel data set. Our findings suggest that finite sample bias due to weak instruments is a potential problem when relying on first-differenced Generalize Method of Moment (GMM) estimator. The application of the extended GMM estimator, with more informative instruments, improves the efficiency of estimates and gives more reasonable results. Specifically, we find that ICT has a negative and significant impact on firm’s productivity in Cameroon.