The Effect of information and Communication Technologies on Unemployment: the Case of Selected OECD Countries

Ahmet Unlu1 and Seckin Kabak2
Volume 16, Issue 2

With the acceleration of technological advances since the 1970s, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have begun to play an active and significant role in the global economy. Today, it is widely accepted that ICT directly or indirectly affects economic structures as well as social life. It is seen that ICT, together with globalization, has important consequences on macroeconomic indicators such as growth, development and unemployment. The effects of ICT, countries and specific economic variables are progressing with various academic studies. In this study, it was aimed to question the causality relationship between two variables in a sample of countries selected from the OECD with similar ICT and unemployment rates in order to reduce the overall variance in the model. This is seen in the most similar countries with Türkiye, the rate of internet access and rate ratio representing ICT development, the bootstrap panel causality analysis presented by Emirmahmutoğlu & Kose (2011) was completed for the period covering the years 2005-2021. As a result, although the countries show similar characteristics in the selection criterion rates, it is understood that there are differences between the unemployment rate and the rate of internet access representing ICT according to the shape of the causality relationship. A direct causality relationship was found in Brazil, which has similar characteristics to Türkiye, in terms of ICT exits, while a reverse causality relationship was found in Latvia and Lithuania.

Keywords: Information and Communication Technologies, Unemployment, OECD, Causality, Time Series
JEL Classifications: B22, D83, J21, C23
DOI #: 10.33818/ier.1493743