ABSTRACT
The diffusion of Information Technology (IT) has been paralleled by an increasing awareness of the key role played by computer software in this process. In the current literature on developing countries (LDCs), computer software is often regarded as an optimal point of entry into the IT ‘complex’. The usual argument given is that software is a labourintensive activity with relatively low rates of technical change, and that those countries more endowed with a skilled labour force could therefore exploit their comparative advantage of relatively cheap labour. However, little systematic evidence has been gathered to support this argument. Furthermore, this type of rationale can be regarded as oversimplistic and static. Neither the dynamics of the interdependences between hard and software at the technological level nor the evolution of the international market framework is taken into consideration.
