Characterizing and comparing the evolution of the major global economies in information and communication technologies

In this paper, we characterise and compare status and evolution of the ICT industry of the six major global economies in ICT: China, the EU, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the USA. For this, we employ official data covering the period 2006–2009. Our analysis shows that although the EU is the largest economy of the world, it is the least ICT-specialised economy of all six major ICT economies. The USA is clearly the top global player in ICT in many respects. In both ICT Manufacturing and ICT Services it has the largest Value Added, BERD, BERD intensity and labour productivity. We further observe that China has, by far, the largest number of employees in both ICT Manufacturing and Services, while its level of ICT BERD remains low. China is however an emerging economy and economic indicators of its ICT sector have strongly grown from 2006 to 2009. Japan׳s ICT sector has a larger weight in the national economy than those of the USA, EU, and China. Moreover, it is the country from which the highest number of ICT patent applications originate. We also find that, of all six major global economies in ICT, Taiwan and Korea have the most ICT-specialised economies, with a strong orientation towards Manufacturing. Finally, we discuss selected results of our analysis and conclude the paper with tentative policy implications for the EU.