Measuring ‘indirect’ investments in ICT in OECD countries

2019

International audience; ICT components, such as microprocessors, may be embodied in other capital goods not recorded as ICT in National Accounts. We name ‘indirect ICT investment’ the value of embodied ICT components in non-ICT investment. The paper provides estimates of ‘indirect ICT investment’ based on detailed and unpublished Supply-Use tables (SUT) in 12 OECD countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.Our main finding is that ICT investment appears significantly higher when considering its indirect component, the average increase being about 35%. The inclusion of i…