Crime and Social media

Purpose-The study complements the scant macroeconomic literature on the development outcomes of social media by examining the relationship between Facebook penetration and violent crime levels in a cross-section of 148 countries for the year 2012. Design/methodology/approach-The empirical evidence is based on Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), Tobit and Quantile regressions. In order to respond to policy concerns on the limited evidence on the consequences of social media in developing countries, the dataset is disaggregated into regions and income levels. The decomposition by income levels included: low income, lower middle income, upper middle income and high income. The corresponding regions include: Europe and Central Asia, East Asia and the Pacific, Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Findings-From OLS and Tobit regressions, there is a negative relationship between Facebook penetration and crime. However, Quantile regressions reveal that the established negative relationship is noticeable exclusively in the 90th crime decile. Further, when the dataset is decomposed into regions and income levels, the negative relationship is evident in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) while a positive relationship is confirmed for sub-Saharan Africa. Policy implications are discussed. Originality/value- Studies on the development outcomes of social media are sparse because of a lack of reliable macroeconomic data on social media. This study primarily complemented three existing studies that have leveraged on a newly available dataset on Facebook

Nexo TIC-finanzas-crecimiento: hallazgos empíricos de los países de los Próximos 11

This study assesses the causal relationship between information and communication technology (ICT) penetration, financial development, and economic growth in Next-11 countries between 1961 and 2012. A panel vector auto-regressive (VAR) model is used to detect the direction of causality between ICT, financial sector development and economic growth for these countries. The results reveal that there is Granger-causality among the variables both in the short run and in the long run, although the exact nature of the results varies by the ICT penetration indicators for the sample countries. Empirical results from this study provide valuable insights on policies pertaining to ICT penetration, financial sector development and economic growthEl presente estudio evalúa la relación causal entre la penetración de las tecnologías de la información y comunicación (TIC), el desarrollo financiero y el crecimiento económico en los Próximos 11 entre 1961 y 2012. Se utilizó un modelo de panel de vectores autorregresivos países para detectar la dirección de causalidad entre las TIC, el desarrollo del sector financiero y el crecimiento económico para estos países. Los resultados revelan que existe una causalidad de Granger entre las variables tanto a corto como a medio plazo, si bien la naturaleza exacta de los hallazgos varía conforme a los indicadores de penetración de las TIC para los países dela muestra. Los resultados empíricos de este estudio suponen una valiosa perspectiva a cerca de las políticas de penetración de las TIC, el desarrollo del sector financiero y el crecimiento económic

Towards the alternative measurement: Discovering the relationships between technology adoption and quality of life in Indonesia

The vast majority of the studies investigating telecommunication development (diffusion of mobile phone, Internet, the broadband, etc.) that have been carried out in the literatures aim at assessing the impact on economic indicators, mainly the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), whereas little attention has actually been paid to investigate the other measurement which reflects a more direct linkage to the individual welfare, for instance the quality of life (QOL) indicators. Following the current counterargument for using the GDP as the goal of economic development, this paper investigates a survey data in Indonesia, observing the relationships between the experience to technology (the length of mobile phone ownership) and technology adoption (internet access) in affecting quality of life (QOL) at individual level. The QOL index is proxied by two indicators which are equally weighted; the objective measurement represented by income level and subjective perceived QOL following the study by Costanza et al., (2007). To operationalize these aims, the model is investigated in two sequential ways; first by determining binomial probit on the Internet access demand equation and then putting the predicted probability of the first equation into second equation of the ordered probit model. The model is further analyzed through the return to education-type equation (Card, 2001) to see the impact of experience to technology and internet access on the QOL index. The results indicate that whereas the access to the Internet is not statistically significant affecting QOL, experience to technology plays an important role. Additionally, the experience of technology (measured at its mean value of 3.5 years) affects the likelihood to have a lower QOL index around 49% and to achieve a higher QOL index in Indonesia around 12%. A year additional of ownership reduces the likelihood on a lower QOL by 3.6% and increases the likelihood to obtain a higher QOL by 2%. --technology,quality of life,ordered-probit,Internet

Policy reform, economic growth, and the digital divide - an econometric analysis

Rapid growth of Internet use in high-income economies, has raised the specter of a"digital divide"that will marginalize developing countries, because they can neither afford Internet access, nor use it effectively when it is available. Using a new cross-country data set, the authors investigate two proximate determinants of the digital divide: Internet intensity (Internet subscriptions per telephones mainline), and access to telecom services. Surprisingly, they find no gap in Internet intensity. When differences in urbanization, and competition policy are controlled for, low-income countries have intensities as high as those of industrial countries. While income does not seem to matter in this context, competition policy matters a great deal. Low-income countries with high World Bank ratings for competition policy, have significantly higher Internet intensities. The authors'findings on Internet intensity implies that the digital divide is not really new, but reflects a persistent gap in the availability of mainline telephones services. After identifying mobile telephones as a promising new platform for Internet access, they use panel data to study the determinants of mobile telephone diffusion during the past decade. Their results show that income explains part of the diffusion lag for poor countries, but they also highlight the critical role of policy. Developing countries whose policies promote economic growth, and private sector competition, have experienced much more rapid diffusion of mobile telephone services. Simulations based on the econometric results, suggest that feasible reforms could sharply narrow the digital divide during the next decade for many countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The authors'review of the literature, also suggests that direct access promotion would yield substantial benefits for poor households, and that cost-effective intervention strategies are now available.ICT Policy and Strategies,Knowledge Economy,Education for the Knowledge Economy,Health Economics&Finance,Health Monitoring&Evaluation

Telecommunications for the Needy: How needed are they?

Telecommunications, mobile and non-mobile, play a major role in our society, but their role as tools for escaping poverty remains a policy agenda still with room for progress both in Europe and around the World. Some groups in society, like the needy, have difficulties in accessing and using such technologies in ways that mirror the debates of the late 90s over the "digital divide". For some groups, like the needy, it would be more exact to address the concept of digital poverty rather than digital divide, because without access to telecommunications one might not have the same degree of opportunities to leave poverty or not to fall into poverty [34] [3] [4]. The goal of this paper is to scope the problem by departing from the Portuguese case study. Our research is empirical and highlights the telecommunication ownership and expenditures of the Portuguese population, and specially the most fragile segments within it. Such an effort is undertaken while not ignoring major issues of political economy of the contemporary globalizing networked society. Our main argument in this paper is that, if telecommunications are a needed tool for the lower income segments of the population, that is the needy, a debate around digital poverty associated to mobile telecommunications is needed in Europe too and to address such issues we need public policy commitments.needy, mobile telecommunications, digital poverty, digital divide, telecommunication policies

An analytical framework to nowcast well-being using mobile phone data

An intriguing open question is whether measurements made on Big Data recording human activities can yield us high-fidelity proxies of socio-economic development and well-being. Can we monitor and predict the socio-economic development of a territory just by observing the behavior of its inhabitants through the lens of Big Data? In this paper, we design a data-driven analytical framework that uses mobility measures and social measures extracted from mobile phone data to estimate indicators for socio-economic development and well-being. We discover that the diversity of mobility, defined in terms of entropy of the individual users' trajectories, exhibits (i) significant correlation with two different socio-economic indicators and (ii) the highest importance in predictive models built to predict the socio-economic indicators. Our analytical framework opens an interesting perspective to study human behavior through the lens of Big Data by means of new statistical indicators that quantify and possibly "nowcast" the well-being and the socio-economic development of a territory

Public Service Delivery: Role of Information and Communication Technology in Improving Governance and Development Impact

The focus of this paper is on improving governance through the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in the delivery of services to the poor, i.e., improving efficiency, accountability, and transparency, and reducing bribery. A number of papers recognize the potential benefits but they also point out that it has not been easy to harness this potential. This paper presents an analysis of effective case studies from developing countries where the benefits have reached a large number of poor citizens. It also identifies the critical success factors for wide-scale deployment. The paper includes cases on the use of ICTs in the management of delivery of public services in health, education, and provision of subsidized food. Cases on electronic delivery of government services, such as providing certificates and licenses to rural populations, which in turn provide entitlements to the poor for subsidized food, fertilizer, and health services are also included. ICT-enabled provision of information to enhance rural income is also covered

The Digitalisation of African Agriculture Report 2018-2019

An inclusive, digitally-enabled agricultural transformation could help achieve meaningful livelihood improvements for Africa’s smallholder farmers and pastoralists. It could drive greater engagement in agriculture from women and youth and create employment opportunities along the value chain. At CTA we staked a claim on this power of digitalisation to more systematically transform agriculture early on. Digitalisation, focusing on not individual ICTs but the application of these technologies to entire value chains, is a theme that cuts across all of our work. In youth entrepreneurship, we are fostering a new breed of young ICT ‘agripreneurs’. In climate-smart agriculture multiple projects provide information that can help towards building resilience for smallholder farmers. And in women empowerment we are supporting digital platforms to drive greater inclusion for women entrepreneurs in agricultural value chains