The positive correlation found between ICT imports and environmental quality (LCF) might not be due to the beneficial effects of “ICT use” as the paper concludes….. Could it instead be capturing an unrelated structural economic shift? ……For example, if the US over this period moved towards a more service-oriented economy that imports more ICT goods but has a lower domestic industrial footprint, the positive sign might reflect this deindustrialization rather than the effect of ICT itself.
The policy recommendation to “promote ICT use” based on this finding may be misguided…. Encouraging higher imports of ICT goods does not necessarily lead to the efficiency gains and dematerialization that the theory suggests……. Wouldn’t a metric like mobile broadband subscriptions, internet users (% of population), or ICT value added (% of GDP) be a more direct proxy for the actual use of ICT?