This paper uses firm-level data to assess whether telecommunication services are general-purpose technologies (technologies that benefit a large segment of the economy and have long-lasting effect). It finds that only Internet services are so: firm growth and productivity are much higher when...

The objective of the South Africa Investment Climate Assessment (ICA) is to evaluate the investment climate in South Africa in all its operational dimensions and to promote policies to strengthen the private sector. The investment climate is made up of the many location-specific factors that...

Introducing private sector participation (PSP) into the water and sewerage sectors is difficult and controversial. Empirical studies on its effects are scant and generally inconclusive. Case studies tend to find improvements following privatisation, but they suffer from selection bias and it is...

Many observers attributed the rapid productivity growth observed in the United States in the mid- to late 1990s, to the growing use of information, and the Internet. This in turn created concern that developing, and transition economies - where use of information technology, and the Internet was...

If the Internet made it easier for firms to enter new markets by reducing communication and search costs, then it may also have made it easier to export goods and services. The authors find that higher Internet penetration in developing countries is correlated with greater exports to industrial...

Many commentators have suggested that the internet is one of the forces driving globalization. This paper assesses one aspect of these claims, looking at whether internet access appears to affect the export performance using data from enterprises in low and middle-income economies in Eastern...

There has been much concern about Africa's recent export performance. Even though tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade have been falling, Africa's share of world exports has declined and most African countries remain highly dependent on a narrow range of primary commodities for export...