Digitalisation of industries: A comparative analysis from Australia and Finland

Abstract

This paper features a two-country study on digitalisation: Australia and Finland. The empirical data was acquired from the national accounts for 1995-2015 in Australia and for 1998-2012 in Finland. This data was averaged for a cross-sectional comparison of industries and then for the two countries. Different industries' advancement in digitalisation seems to follow approximately the same pacing in both countries. Financial and insurance services, telecommunications and media, and professional, technical and scientific services are the most active digitalisers. The empirical testing of the a priori assumption that digitalisation over a long period of time leads to greater productivity shows that the observed correlation between information and communication technology (ICT) investment and productivity is weak. The results partly confirm Solow's productivity paradox.