Challenges and Opportunities for Improving Growth in the Information Technology Services Sector in Romania
Raluca Robu, Alina-Petronela Alexoaei

Abstract
The main purpose of the paper is to analyze the information and communication technology sector in Romania and its export competitiveness in relation to two types of company strategies and actual trends identified by consultancy firms: reducing operating costs and obtaining cost efficiency. We find a positive evolution of the ICT sector (exports’ growth and increased labor specialization in ICT), but a substantial difference between Romania and the regional leaders. To describe cost efficiency, we choose labor productivity as an indicator, which generally decreased in the region, given the labor cost growth. In the last part of the analysis, running a panel data regression, we aim at identifying how the factors, which are mostly targeted in the company strategies, labor cost and labor productivity, have a higher impact on the export growth in ICT in the European Union. Our findings suggests that companies should focus more on increasing productivity rather than reducing costs.

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