Purpose – This paper empirically investigates the relationship between Information and Communication Technology (ICT) goods imports and economic growth with a focus on the 13 Asia-Pacific economies during 2005-2016. In particular, this paper extends the study by breaking down the data of Asia-Pacific countries into High Income Countries (HICs) and Low Income Countries (LICs) according to the difference of income levels. Design/methodology – Our empirical model employs the standard growth model based on the Barro (1998)-type growth framework. Using static panel-data technique, we estimate the effect of ICT goods imports on economic growth in the 13 Asia-Pacific economies. In addition, we also estimate a difference of the ICT goods imports–economic growth link between HICs and LICs. Findings –The estimation results indicate that ICT goods import has a significant positive effect on economic growth, while ICT goods export has a positive but statistically insignificant effect on it. When we break down the panel data into HICs and LICs in order to gain further insight, ICT goods imports has been effective in spurring growth in only LICs but not in HICs. The other supplementary results show that both domestic investment (GCF) and life expectancy (LE) have a significantly positive impact on economic growth in both HICs and LICs. Originality/value – The main findings of the paper suggest that ICT goods imports has a positive effect on economic growth in only LICs but not in HICs. This result supports the so-called ‘leapfrogging’ hypothesis through ICT goods imports in the Asia-Pacific countries, in which LICs are gaining more from ICT goods imports than HICs.

中文翻译：

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ICT产品进口对经济增长的影响：来自亚太国家的证据

目的–本文以经验方式研究了信息和通信技术（ICT）货物进口与经济增长之间的关系，重点是2005-2016年期间的13个亚太经济体。尤其是，本文根据收入水平的差异将亚太国家的数据分为高收入国家（HIC）和低收入国家（LIC）来扩展研究范围。设计/方法论–我们的经验模型采用基于Barro（1998）型增长框架的标准增长模型。使用静态面板数据技术，我们估算了ICT产品进口对13个亚太经济体经济增长的影响。此外，我们还估计了信息通信技术商品进口与高收入国家和低收入国家之间的经济增长联系之间的差异。结果–估计结果表明，ICT产品进口对经济增长具有显着的积极影响，而ICT产品出口对其具有积极的影响，但在统计上却微不足道。当我们将面板数据分为HIC和LIC以获得更多的见解时，ICT产品的进口已有效地刺激了LIC而不是HIC的增长。其他补充结果表明，国内投资（GCF）和预期寿命（LE）都对高收入国家和低收入国家的经济增长产生了显着的积极影响。原创性/价值–该文件的主要发现表明，ICT产品的进口仅对低收入国家有效，对高收入国家没有经济增长的积极影响。这一结果支持了通过亚太国家/地区的ICT产品进口进行的“跨越式”假设，