Factors Contributing to Global Digital Divide: Some Empirical Results

The present paper investigates the factors that contribute to the problem of digital divide in the global community. The global digital divide is defined as the difference in the value of IT index (comprised of four IT adoption data: the Internet, PC, Cell phone and telephone) of a nation from the U.S. A model is proposed that contains several new indicators, not tried in the literature before. The model is then tested on Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) over a period of time. Results indicate that some of these indicators explain the existence of global digital divide. The study also concludes that the factors that are responsible for such divide are not all common for OECD and ECLAC set of nations and that significances of these indicators also vary over time.