Has the Internet Saved the Economy? Modeling Impact of ICT Sector and COVID-19 on GDP

Abstract

This paper presents the in uence of the COVID- 19 pandemic on gross domestic product (GDP) per capita for the 27 countries of the European Union. A panel model with fixed effects was applied to a dataset from 2010 to 2020. The analysis covered 13 independent variables, including nine related to the telecommunications market, and assessed their impact on GDP per capita. A variable related to the number of COVID-19 deaths per one thousand inhabitants was then added to the model. The results showed that COVID-19 is a significant factor and is negatively correlated with GDP per capita. The analysis described in the article has also shown that the importance of the ICT sector increased during the pandemic, i.e. the household broadband Internet variable became statistically significant.