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The ICT Sector, Growth and Productivity: Ireland and Australia Compared

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Roy Green ,
John Burgess  and
Grant Turner
Roy Green
Affiliation:
National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland
John Burgess
Affiliation:
Employment Studies Centre, University of Newcastle
Grant Turner
Affiliation:
Reserve Bank of Australia
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Abstract

This article compares the productivity and employment performance of the Australian and Irish economies over the 1990s, with particular emphasis on the different approaches to the role of information and communications technologies (ICT). Whereas Australia’s performance is characterised by the application and diffusion of ICT across a number of sectors, with indirect productivity and employment effects, Ireland has become a major producer of ICT products and services in its own right. The article traces the implications of these approaches for the pattern of growth and employment in both economies and also indicates their limitations. Ireland’s approach is limited by dependence on foreign investment, embodying externally generated technologies, though this is now being addressed by a policy interest in R&D support and the development of industry clusters and networks. On the other hand, Australia faces growing and possibly unsustainable deficits in its current account, driven by imports of knowledge-intensive goods and services, notwithstanding recent improvements in the terms of trade associated with higher prices for primary commodity exports.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , June 2004 , pp. 99 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2004

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Footnotes

*

This article is based on a paper presented to the Irish-Australian Studies Conference, National University of Ireland, Galway, June 2002. It has benefited from comments by the editors of ELRR and an anonymous referee.

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