The Effect of Information and Communication Technologies on Unemployment: The Case of Selected OECD Countries

With the rapid pace of technological developments in the 1970s, Information Communication Technologies (ICT) has revealed its existence. In the modern world, ICT has direct or indirect effects on social and economic life. The use of ICT has an impact on globalisation as well as on macroeconomic dynamics such as growth, development and unemployment. These effects are the subject of research in various countries and dynamics. The aim of this study is to apply the bootstrap causality analysis presented by Emirmahmutoglu & Kose (2011) from panel data techniques covering the years 2005-2021 of countries selected according to certain criteria within the OECD. In the selection criterion, the countries whose internet access rate variable representing ICT development is the most similar to Türkiye are taken into consideration. As a result, although the countries have similar characteristics due to the selection criterion, the existence of country-specific differences in the direction of the causality relationship between the unemployment and the internet access rate representing ICT is investigated. In Brazil, which has similar characteristics with Türkiye, a causality relationship was found from ICT to unemployment rate.