European Regional Science Association
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European Regional Science Association
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The abstract for paper number 536:
James Giesecke, Centre of Policy Studies, , Australia
The Regional Impacts of the Growth of "New Economy" Industries - The Case of Australian Telecommunications
The Australian Telecommunications sector has experienced rapid growth in recent years, with real output increasing at an annual average rate of approximately 14 per cent since 1996/97. Impetuses to this growth were the competition-promoting reforms embodied in the Telecommunications Act of 1997 and the diffusion and introduction of new telecommunications products and technologies. This paper investigates the regional and national economic consequences of the rapid growth in this sector over the period 1996/97-01/02 via historical simulations with the MONASH model of the Australian economy. Existing studies of the impact of information and communications technologies (ICT) on productivity draw a distinction between ICT-production and ICT-use impacts on productivity. This paper falls within the former category, investigating the effects of structural change in one (Telecommunications) ICT-producing sector, while adopting a neutral stance on the question of the implications of this sector's rapid growth for the productivity of users of Telecommunications services. The regional effects of the sector's rapid growth are assessed via a two-stage (national to state, state to sub-state) top-down decomposition of the national results to the regional level. Regions are found to have experienced a diverse range of real GDP outcomes. However these outcomes are generated largely by differences in the share of each region's economic activity accounted for by economic activity in the Telecommunications sector. Since much of the Telecommunications sector's economic activity takes place in capital city regions, the rapid growth in this sector has favoured the concentration of economic activity in these regions.
Unfortunately full paper has not been submitted.