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Notes
There are, however, more micro studies and evaluations than the author allows. Some of the micro-evidence is reported in Best and Kenny (2009) and Day and Greenwood (2009) while international institutions such as the World Bank routinely evaluate their projects, including those with an IT component.
One reason is that penetration tends to ignore quality differences in IT. Another reason is of course that adoption is only part of the overall welfare effect, which, at least in the case of the Internet, is heavily conditioned by the way in which the technology is used.
Chaudhuri spends quite a lot of time trying to explain this difference but he does not consider the role of leapfrogging in the mobile success story. This concerns the ability of developing countries to bypass previous stages of technology (most notably the fixed-line infrastructure) and jump directly to mobile telephony. The ability of developing countries to leapfrog in this way is reflected in a high ratio of mobile to fixed-lines.
The point is not that the macro models are beyond criticism. Like all models they make assumptions that may or may not be realistic.
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James, J. Commentary. J Inf Technol 27, 342–343 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/jit.2012.21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/jit.2012.21