Infrastructure and productivity: An extension to private infrastructure and it productivity

This paper incorporates both public and private infrastructure within the framework of a nonlinear production function. The theoretical model specifies a technological growth rate as a nonlinear function of government infrastructure and private infrastructure generated by the information sector of the economy-cable, wireless stations, satellites, internet facilities, broadcasting, etc. The time trend is included to capture the effect of all other variables. The empirical estimates generated by the model imply increasing returns to scale for the US economy in the last few years. The evaluation of the growth accounting equation implies that information technology was the largest contributing component to growth during the expansion of the 1990s. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.