Mobile telephony, economic growth, financial development, foreign direct investment, and imports of ICT goods: the case of the G-20 countries Rudra P. Pradhan 1 • Mak B. Arvin 2 • John H. Hall 3 • Sara E. Bennett 4 Received: 25 April 2017 / Revised: 20 August 2017 / Accepted: 11 November 2017 Ó Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale 2017 Abstract We study the interactions between the diffusion of mobile phones, for- eign direct investment, financial development, ICT goods imports, and economic growth using a panel dataset covering the G-20 countries for the period 1990–2014. Using our multivariate framework, we find that all of the variables are cointegrated. Our findings also reveal a network of short-run and long-run causal relationships between the variables, including long-run unidirectional causality from foreign direct investment and financial development to the diffusion of mobile phones and economic growth. Keywords Mobile phones  Foreign direct investment  Financial development  ICT goods imports  Economic growth  Granger causality JEL Classification L96  O32  O33  O43 & Rudra P. Pradhan rudrap@vgsom.iitkgp.ernet.in Mak B. Arvin marvin@trentu.ca John H. Hall john.hall@up.ac.za Sara E. Bennett bennett.se@lynchburg.edu 1 Vinod Gupta School of Management, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, WB 721302, India 2 Department of Economics, Trent University, Peterborough, ON K9L 0G2, Canada 3 Department of Financial Management, University of Pretoria, Pretoria 0028, Republic of South Africa 4 School of Business and Economics, Lynchburg College, Lynchburg, VA 24501, USA 123 Econ Polit Ind https://doi.org/10.1007/s40812-017-0084-7