ICT, trade openness and economic growth in Tunisia: what is going wrong?

Abstract

In the age of digital globalization, information and communication technologies (ICT) and international trade seem to have become the engines of economic growth. In this study, we investigate the impacts on Tunisia’s economic growth of using ICTs and greater trade openness. We employ a cross-section augmented autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) model and apply Dumitrescu and Hurlin Granger causality test to panel data for 14 economic sectors in the period 1995–2018. The empirical findings suggest that use of ICTs has a long-term relationship with value added and increased economic growth in Tunisia. In addition, trade openness and gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) have a positive and significant effect on economic growth. We also examine the relationships among these variables in the short and long run. The Dumitrescu and Hurlin test reveals four bidirectional and two unidirectional causal relationships between the variables.

Impact of natural resources, trade openness, and economic growth on CO2 emissions in oil‐exporting countries: A panel autoregressive distributed lag analysis

“…At the same time, economic growth often leads to greater trade openness, as growing economies demand more resources, products, and services, many of which have to be imported. This finding is in line with some existing studies, such as Sakyi et al (2015), Dahmani et al (2022), and Banday and Aneja (2023).…”

The Impact of Digitalization and Trade Openness on Economic Growth: New Evidence from Richest Asian Countries

“…Digitalization can further optimize the industrial structure and create jobs through information and communication technology (ICT), Internet and other intelligent means, greatly increasing the economic development of countries. In recent years, the digital economy has become a new economic form after the agricultural and industrial economies, see Dahmani et al (2021Dahmani et al ( , 2022aDahmani et al ( , 2022b. Previous investigations have expose that the digital economy is well-respected the principal driver of economic growth and sustainable development in both developed and developing countries.…”

Re-examining the tourism-led growth nexus and the role of information and communication technology in East Asia and the Pacific

“…The second independent variable which is the moderating variable is a composite index of ICT indicators derived using the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) given the strong correlation among them. In line with the extant literature [ 11 , 16 , [60] , [61] , [62] , [63] , [64] , [65] ], the ICT variables are: mobile phone subscription per 100 people ( MOB ), fixed telephone subscription per 100 people ( FTEL ), fixed broadband subscription per 100 people ( FXB ), and secure Internet servers per million people ( SEV ). In line with the growth literature, the following control variables are included: individuals using the Internet ( NET ), gross fixed capital formation (GFCF), and labour force participation ( LAB ), an index of institutional quality (INST), research and development (R&D), and human capital (HC) proxied by tertiary school enrolment.…”