Information and communications technology and productivity growth in Japan

Over the last two decades, there has been controversy about the impact of information technology on the Japanese economy. Some analysts claimed that information technology contributed to the improvement of productivity while others argued it did very little. Studies by the Japanese Economic Planning Agency and by the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry find that IT capital deepening contributed 1⁄4 to 1⁄2 of 1 percentage point to labor productivity during the second half of the 1990s (Callen and Ostry (eds), 2003).