Convergence in telecommunications infrastructure development in OECD countries

We use a database of 22 member countries of OECD for the years 1980 to 1995 to explore the issue of convergence in the pattern of efficiency with whic h the telecommunications sector have been developed among OECD countries. O ur approach uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) to explore the order of ma gnitude of performance differences between countries. We then test for a-co nvergence using Friedman's (1992) [Friedman, M., 1992. Do old fallacies eve r die? Journal of Economic Literature 30, 2129-2132] suggestion that the co efficient of variance is a useful measure for this task. Thereafter, we use two rank tests - the Wilcoxon Matched-Pairs Signed Rank Test and Kendall's Coefficient of Concordance - to evaluate the presence of beta -convergence or intra-distributional mobility. Our empirical investigation suggests tha t OECD countries have a-converged and also, to some extent, sigma -converge d in their development of telecommunication infrastructures. Our empirical exploration further indicates that OECD countries have distinctly beta -con verged in efficiency with which they have provided the fixed and cellular t elecommunications infrastructure. Our data do not support the presence of b eta -convergence, or leapfrogging, in the efficiency of telecommunications infrastructure provision among OECD countries. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B. V. All rights reserved.