Modeling broadband, mobile telephone and economic growth on a macro level: Empirical evidence from G7 countries

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has played overwhelming roles in the economic and social development of nations and continents in the last two decades. This study aims to explore the impact of mobile telephone and broadband use on economic growth in G7 countries using annual data covering the period of 2000-2017. We performed Pedroni cointegration, Kao cointegration, fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS), dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS), and panel Granger causality tests to investigate the causal and long-run effects. The empirical findings reveal that (i) mobile telephone and broadband use contribute to economic growth in the long-run; (ii) changes in mobile telephone and broadband use significantly lead to a change in economic growth.