Impact of Communications Technology on the Productivity Growth in Iran

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the communications on the productivity growth in Iran. For this purpose, we use input-output table for the years 1988 and 1999. The input-output data are published by the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran. We aggregate these tables in the 19 sector tables and then we use a price index to deflate nominal values on constant price of 1997. The results of the paper show that the development of the communications technology has a positive and significant impact on the growth productivity of the economy. More specifically, the findings confirm that it has a positive and significant effect on the some goods and services sectors such as paper production, printing and publishing, chemical production, plastic and rubber, basic metals production, buildings, real estate transportation and warehousing, and professional services. To sum up, the communications technology has created the most influential effects on the service sector while it has created the least influential effects on the mineral sector in Iran.