ICT Stochastic Externalities and Growth: Missed Opportunities, Beyond Sustainability or What?

In this paper we present an analysis of the OECD production process and consider the ICT as driver of growth. In doing so the production function approach adopted underlines the externalities exploited or not and, possibly, when the production process overpasses the countries capacities implied by the technical parameters. In line with the general purpose theory such externalities are attributed to ICT. Business services are relevant as a vehicle to better exploit the innovative capital embedded in the production process. We develop and implement a methodology for the evaluation of the different effects on growth related to ICT. Our main conclusion is that even if a competitive solution is viable there are possible, though small, margins for a sustained growth in the long run for the OECD countries considered. We also point out some conclusions on the capital and labour shares showing that the latter is too small both in the long and short run.