Charles Kenny

Books, Papers and Articles

Category: J. Internet and ICTs

  • Chapter Three of Overselling the Web? looks at the impact of ICTs in wealthy countries, with a focus on the US.  It opens with a discussion of the evidence regarding the total factor productivity (TFP) impact of ICTs.  ICT using sectors have seen considerable investments in computing and communications –they accounted for as much as…

  • Chapter Four of Overselling the Web? reports on the rapidly shrinking digital divide.  Already, access in terms of Internet use per dollar of GDP is higher in the developing than the developed world.  Business use in particular is reaching global ubiquity –even in Kenya, 78 percent of firms use email. This is a strong sign…

  • Countries can generate significant returns from incorporating ICTs into government reform programs.  Singapore’s government estimates that every dollar it has spent on ICTs has generated $2.70 in returns.  But it isn’t easy to do, and for every success there are examples of expensive disappointment.  Richard Heeks suggests that failure rates for IT projects in developing…

  • Chapter Six of Overselling the Web? opens with an analysis of the technological divide separating India from the US: Already, there is more than a seventy-fold difference in access rates between US and Indian households. That gap is far larger than the income divide between the two countries.  Worse, the divide is linked to productivity,…

  • Chapter Seven of Overselling the Web? notes the long tradition of linking technological advance to dramatic social change –stretching back to the Communist Manifesto which suggested that railways were catalysts to revolution.  And it is hard to argue with the fact there have been significant social changes as a result of the Internet.  But you…

  • Questioning the Monopoly-Supported Postal USO in Developing Countries was published in M.A. Crew and P.R. Kleindorfer (eds.), Progress toward Liberalization of the Postal and Delivery Sector (Springer, 2005).  The monopoly-supported universal service obligation (USO) is usually defended on the grounds that the monopoly allows for cross-subsidy in letter services that in turn allows universal access…

  • A Short Review of Information and Communication Technologies and Basic Education in LDCs: What is Useful, What is Sustainable? was co-authored with Jeremy Grace and published in the International Journal of Educational Development 23 (2003). Information and communication technologies such as radio and television have long been used in education. The advent of the technology…

  • W(h)ither the Digital Divide?, written with Carsten Fink, was published in info 5,6, in 2003. The "widening digital divide" has the status of fact in most discussions of the global distribution of information and communications technologies (ICTs), and that this divide is a problem is widely accepted. This paper challenges both assumptions. First, looking at…

  • The Internet and Economic Growth in Less-developed Countries: A Case of Managing Expectations? was published in Oxford Development Studies 31, 1, 2003.  A discussion of the theory of technology and economic growth suggests potentially negative implications for the impact of the Internet on developing countries. Technology in general is undoubtedly central to the growth process,…

  • Can Information and Communication Technologies be Pro-Poor? co-authored with Emmanuel Forestier and Jeremy Grace, published in Telecommunications Policy, 26, 11, 2002. There is over 20 years of accumulated cross-country evidence on the link between telecommunications provision and economic growth. Looking at micro-studies from a range of countries including Bangladesh, Botswana and Zimbabwe, there is also…