Purpose Coronavirus (COVID-19) has exposed the digital divide (DD) like never before and has made it a hot topic of actuality. In this paper, a state of the art of research studies that dealt with the three levels of the digital divide and highlight its shortcomings in light of COVID-19 are presented. Design/methodology/approach An integrative literature review was conducted, summarizing the rich literature on the digital divide by presenting its key concepts and findings. This study then provides suggestions for future research in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings It can be concluded that the digital divide is insufficiently exposed and examined by researchers. In fact, in recent years, very few research studies have focused on the first-level divide. Moreover, much of the literature has analyzed the second digital divide (in terms of e-skills) in the strict sense and at the national level. This review also shows that the existing studies on the third level-digital divide deal only with the individual results of using the Internet. Finally, future research on the three-level digital divide should study more digital inequality related to emerging technologies is proposed. Research limitations/implications This paper draws up a state of art, which has important theoretical and practical implications in the effectiveness of full transformation to digitalization. Originality/value The present study contributes to digital inequality research by summarizing key concepts and findings from the literature of the three levels of the digital divide. It highlights the unexplored research topics on some dimensions of DD which were behind the digital transformation failure in many countries and provides insights on future research directions in light of COVID-19.

Some say that the digital gap adds new inequalities to the economic and social inequalities and help amplify them. However, others think that this gap is simply the effect of the existing social and economic inequalities. Although the first opinion has been studied by a fair number of empirical studies, the second has not had much luck in the existing literature. In this work, we try to examine the impact of inequality on the proliferation of broadband Internet and on the change of its relationship with economic growth. The implementation of two empirical models on panel data for 19 countries covering the 2000-2012 period identified two main original results. The positive impact of broadband on economic growth is reduced by the digital divide, which strengthened by the presence of income inequality and hampers economic growth. The second model emphasizes the blocking effect that income inequality could have on broadband proliferation. Contribution/ Originality:This study is one of very few studies which have investigated the trilateral relationship between broadband (and ICT in general) inequality and growth, and allows studying the inverse relationship between broadband and inequality (i.e. how inequality affects the broadband proliferation). INTRODUCTIONRecently, the growing internal inequalities in the world, and specifically in the advanced countries, has caused a renewed interest in the study of the impact of inequality on economic growth as well as the factors explaining this increase (

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role played by ICT in explaining the dynamics of inequality between the MENA countries and OECD during the 2000s. To do this, we formalize an original model of cumulative growth with four simultaneous equations. As a result, we note three interesting findings. Firstly, ICT investment had an important role in increasing the revenue inequality between the MENA region and OCDE. Secondly, the cumulative and mutual causality relationship between ICT investment and growth rate is apparent. Thirdly, the interaction between human capital and ICT investment can be considered as an important canal which allows the inequality reduction for the MENA countries.

Although there is a plethora of literature that supports the existence of a technological bias in the US and Europe, exploring such a subject in the developing countries is still relevant and very little processed. This article is part of the perspective that involves examining and bringing additional insight to the phenomenon of the technological change skewed in the Tunisian context. Estimating a multinomial logit model directed to 902 employees generated very original results. First, these results confirm the existence of a technological bias in favour of skilled workers in the Tunisian labour market. However, it is no longer the access or the intensive use of ICT at work that privileges some employees and not others, in terms of pay, but rather the employees' digital skills which contribute to rising inequality. Even more, it is the ability to get, select, process and evaluate information based on the specific needs and capacity to use it to achieve specific objectives, and not the simple manipulation of digital technologies and structures, that are at the core of the problem. Finally, the organizational change also contributes to the amplification of the existing wage disparities. Actually, the more independent the employee is in carrying out his tasks and works per project, the higher the probability of earning a high salary vs low and medium salary. However, several other types of organizations do not have any significant positive effect on the wage rise. This reflects a weakness in the labour organization in the Tunisian firms.

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