ICT-finance-growth nexus: Empirical evidence from the Next-11 countries

This study assesses the causal relationship between information and communication (ICT) penetration, financial development, and economic growth in Next-11 between 1961 and 2012. A panel vector auto-regressive (VAR) model is used to detect direction of causality between ICT, financial sector development and economic growth for countries. The results reveal that there is Granger-causality among the variables both the short run and in the long run, although the exact nature of the results varies by the penetration indicators for the sample countries. Empirical results from this study provide insights on policies pertaining to ICT penetration, financial sector development and growth