CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2016
| Author | Frenkil, Eric Stuart |
|---|---|
| Title | Digital Development as an Alternate Path to Growth for LDCs |
| Summary | For more than three decades, the prevailing wisdom on how poor nations should gain wealth has been to grow their industrial base to export more goods overseas. Yet for least-developed countries (LDCs), the path to industrialization is riddled with structural barriers. Faced with competition from Asian growth ‘miracles,’ the hurdle has steepened and export-led growth has come under new waves of scrutiny. International financial institutions have begun to promote an alternative paradigm – investing in internet connectivity as a path to exporting services, rather than goods, on the global economy. In this thesis, I assess whether that emergent paradigm is a suitable alternative to export-led growth for LDCs. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature, I contextualize the two approaches within international relations and compare them along five criteria using qualitative and statistical methods. I present four theoretical frameworks for understanding the internet as an economic force and construct a measure using industry data that I call ‘internet consumption per capita’ to model usage intensity in 177 economies. I find that digital development does not presently appear to be a suitable macroeconomic alternative for the bulk of LDCs, chiefly owing to limited market value and concentrations of wealth in relatively higher-income economies, although I suggest certain subcategories of LDCs for which this path may still prove preferable. These findings call for pause and policy reflectiveness among international institutions promoting digital development, questioning whether such a path will usher in ‘digital dividends’ or lead to another ‘trip down the rabbit hole’ for 48 economies. |
| Supervisor | Kemmerling, Achim |
| Department | International Relations MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2016/frenkil_eric.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University