--- canonical_url: "https://csls.ca/ipm-archive/ipm-issue-33/ict-services-and-their-prices-what-do-they-tell-us-about-productivity-and-technology/" title: "ICT Services and Their Prices: What Do They Tell Us About Productivity and Technology?" author: name: "CSLS" url: "https://csls.ca/author/cslc/" date_published: "2026-07-13T07:42:40+00:00" date_modified: "2026-07-13T07:42:40+00:00" post_type: "ipm" summary: "" ipm_issue_period: - "Fall 2017" ipm_keyword: - "cloud" - "digital economy" - "Federal Reserve" - "ICT" - "mismeasurement" - "Oulton" - "prices" - "productivity" - "services" - "two-sector model" - "United States" ipm_research_theme: - "Technology and innovation" ipm_country_focus: - "United States" featured_image: "https://csls.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/IPM_50_banner.webp" status: "publish" --- # ICT Services and Their Prices: What Do They Tell Us About Productivity and Technology? Canonical URL: https://csls.ca/ipm-archive/ipm-issue-33/ict-services-and-their-prices-what-do-they-tell-us-about-productivity-and-technology/ # ICT Services and Their Prices: What Do They Tell Us About Productivity and Technology? [Download full PDF article](https://csls.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/IPM-Issue-33-9-Byrne-Corrado.pdf) Cite this article × Cite this article as: Byrne, David, and Carol Corrado. 2017. “ICT Services and Their Prices: What Do They Tell Us About Productivity and Technology?” International Productivity Monitor, No. 33 (Fall 2017): 150–181. https://www.csls.ca/ipm-archive/ipm-issue-33/ict-services-and-their-prices-what-do-they-tell-us-about-productivity-and-technology/ ## Authors: - David Byrne Federal Reserve Board - Carol Corrado The Conference Board / Georgetown University ## IPM Issue 33 Fall 2017 pp. 150–181 ## Related IPM articles [The Relationship between Efficiencies Defenses for Mergers and TFP Growth Robin Shaban Fall 2025 | IPM Issue 49 | pp. 82–102](https://csls.ca/ipm-archive/ipm-issue-49/the-relationship-between-efficiencies-defenses-for-mergers-and-tfp-growth/) [Adult Skills and Productivity: New Evidence from PIAAC 2023 Dan Andrews, Balázs Égert, Christine de La Maisonneuve Fall 2025 | IPM Issue 49 | pp. 41–63](https://csls.ca/ipm-archive/ipm-issue-49/adult-skills-and-productivity-new-evidence-from-piaac-2023/) [The Potential Impact of Pro-competitive Regulatory Reforms on Productivity and Growth in Canada Gilbert Cette, Jimmy Lopez, Giuseppe Nicoletti, Océane Vernerey Fall 2025 | IPM Issue 49 | pp. 3–40](https://csls.ca/ipm-archive/ipm-issue-49/the-potential-impact-of-pro-competitive-regulatory-reforms-on-productivity-and-growth-in-canada/) [The Challenges of Productivity Measurement — Review Article on The Measure of Economies: Measuring Productivity in an Age of Technological Change Chad Syverson Spring 2025 | IPM Issue 48 | pp. 139–143](https://csls.ca/ipm-archive/ipm-issue-48/the-challenges-of-productivity-measurement-review-article-on-the-measure-of-economies-measuring-productivity-in-an-age-of-technological-change/) [De-industrialization and the Great Productivity Slowdown: What Comes Next? 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The Canadian Experience Tim Sargent Fall 2024 | IPM Issue 47 | pp. 39–53](https://csls.ca/ipm-archive/ipm-issue-47/how-does-industrial-policy-impact-output-hours-and-productivity-the-canadian-experience/) ## Abstract ## Résumé EN FR Copy link Email LinkedIn This article reassesses the link between ICT prices, technology, and productivity. To understand how the ICT sector could come to the rescue of a whole economy, a multi-sector model developed by Oulton (2012) is extended to include ICT services and used to calibrate the steady-state contribution of the ICT sector to growth in aggregate U.S. labour productivity. The extended model also has implications for the relationship between prices for ICT services and prices for the ICT assets used to supply them, namely, that, ICT service prices may diverge from ICT asset prices and reflect productivity gains from ICT asset management by the sector. All told, because ICT technologies increasingly diffuse through the economy via purchased services (e.g. cloud services, data analytic services), they are not fully accounted for in the standard narrative of ICT’s contribution to economic growth. When this omission is corrected and the price indexes for ICT assets developed in Byrne and Corrado (2017a) are used to indicate the relative productivity of the ICT sector, its contribution to potential labour productivity growth is estimated to be substantially larger than generally thought — 1.4 percentage points per year. The importance of computers, computer Cet article réévalue le lien entre les prix des TIC, la technologie et la productivité. Pour comprendre comment le secteur des TIC pourrait venir au secours de l’ensemble d’une économie, un modèle multisectoriel développé par Oulton (2012) est étendu pour inclure les services TIC et utilisé pour calibrer la contribution à l’état stationnaire du secteur des TIC à la croissance de la productivité globale du travail américain. Le modèle étendu a également des implications pour la relation entre les prix des services TIC et les prix des actifs TIC utilisés pour les fournir, à savoir que les prix des services TIC peuvent diverger des prix des actifs TIC et refléter les gains de productivité issus de la gestion des actifs TIC par le secteur. Au total, parce que les technologies TIC se diffusent de plus en plus dans l’économie via des services achetés (comme les services d’informatique en nuage et les services d’analyse de données), elles ne sont pas pleinement prises en compte dans le récit standard de la contribution des TIC à la croissance économique. 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