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Over the last 5 decades, the economic landscape in Europe has been transformed rapidly due to innovation, digitisation of the economy, and emergence of new sources of growth. However, the complex dynamics among diffusion of innovation, penetration of information and communication technology (ICT), and economic growth have not been adequately studied. This paper investigates the relationships among these three variables for European countries over 1961–2016. The goal is to determine whether the direction of causality among the variables runs both ways, one way, or not at all. Using a vector error-correction model, we find that in the long run, both innovation diffusion and ICT penetration stimulate economic growth. In the short run, however, the causal links are not always uniform and depend on proxies that are used for innovation diffusion and ICT penetration. The results provide valuable insights on the types of policies and strategies that would sustain economic growth in European economies.

We study the interactions between the diffusion of mobile phones, foreign direct investment, financial development, ICT goods imports, and economic growth using a panel dataset covering the G-20 countries for the period 1990–2014. Using our multivariate framework, we find that all of the variables are cointegrated. Our findings also reveal a network of short-run and long-run causal relationships between the variables, including long-run unidirectional causality from foreign direct investment and financial development to the diffusion of mobile phones and economic growth.

This paper examines the causal relationships between insurance market activities, economic growth, financial depth, and government consumption expenditure. We utilize a panel vector autoregressive model to test Granger causality for 18 middle-income countries over 1980–2012—a group that has not been previously studied in this literature. The results show a robust long-run economic relationship between insurance market activities, economic growth, financial depth, and government consumption expenditure. Moreover, in the short run, we find bidirectional causality between financial depth and economic growth, between financial depth and government consumption expenditure, and between insurance market activities and government consumption expenditure. Unidirectional causality exists from insurance market activities to economic growth, from financial depth to insurance market activities, and from government consumption expenditure to economic growth.