Political institutions and telecommunications

It has traditionally been argued that the development of telecommunications infrastructure is dependent oil the quality of countries' political institutions. We estimate the effect of political institutions on the diffusion of three telecommunications services and find it to be much smaller in cellular telephony than in the others. By evaluating the importance of institutions for technologies rather than for industries, we reveal important growth opportunities for developing Countries and discuss venues for alleviating differences between Countries in international telecommunications development. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.