Microsimulation Modeling of ICT Policies at Firm Level

The book focuses on ICT related policies, and in particular the tax policies that have a direct linkage to the firm's performance. Governments are always faced with limited financial resources, and indirect taxation is the easiest source of revenue. ICT cannot be an exception to taxation. Given that ICT has a positive impact on the productivity of the firm, the effect of this taxation is not known by the policy makers. The developed microsimulation model measures the impact of indirect tax policies, that is to say VAT and import duty on ICT to the productivity of a firm. The effect of the policies on the firms is examined with a static microsimulation model which follows a behavioral approach using regression techniques, and based on Cobb-Douglas production function. The model is developed with an easy-to-use friendly windows interface, so that it is appealing to the decision and policy makers. It is developed as an open source application in Microsoft Excel, so that it is easy to adopt, modify and enhance, to suite the various requirements of the policy makers and researchers.