| Summary: | While an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure is a crucial ingredient of a knowledge-based economy (KBE), a skilled labor force and a supportive institutional and business environment are equally important in that they facilitate an economy to use knowledge in a way that is appropriate to its level of development to increase productivity. Skills, education, and training are given their own importance in many countries, but these factors are not given as much attention as technology in discussions of the knowledge economy. However, without sufficient human capital and the appropriate policies in place to take advantage of adopted technologies, their potential is unlikely to be realized. This paper adopts a cross-country perspective and uses indicators and sub-indicators developed by various economic organizations to assess the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries in terms of their development in the various dimensions of a knowledge economy. This assessment finds that, while the GCC countries have performed well in providing a physical ICT infrastructure, they need to focus more on human capital and the business environment to foster the balanced development of their knowledge economies
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