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The Economic Impact of Mobile Broadband Speed

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  • Edquist, Harald

Abstract

Based on panel data of 116 countries in 2014-2019, this paper investigates the association between mobile broadband speed and labor productivity. It finds no robust contemporaneous relationship, but there is a significant and robust effect when a one-year lag of mobile broadband speed is introduced (significant at 3.7 and 0.9 percent levels for fixed and random effects estimation, respectively). The interpretation of the results is that a 10 percent increase in mobile broadband speed in period t-1 is associated with 0.2 percent increase in labor productivity, cetris paribus.

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  • Edquist, Harald, 2021. "The Economic Impact of Mobile Broadband Speed," 23rd ITS Biennial Conference, Online Conference / Gothenburg 2021. Digital societies and industrial transformations: Policies, markets, and technologies in a post-Covid world 238018, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:itsb21:238018
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    Cited by:

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    2. Antonescu, Daniela, 2022. "The relation between digitalization and regional development in Romania," MPRA Paper 115914, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 28 Dec 2022.
    3. Feng, Yuan & Chen, Zhi & Nie, Changfei, 2023. "The effect of broadband infrastructure construction on urban green innovation: Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 581-598.
    4. Saul Beltozar-Clemente & Orlando Iparraguirre-Villanueva & Félix Pucuhuayla-Revatta & Fernando Sierra-Liñan & Joselyn Zapata-Paulini & Michael Cabanillas-Carbonell, 2023. "Contributions of the 5G Network with Respect to Decent Work and Economic Growth (Sustainable Development Goal 8): A Systematic Review of the Literature," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(22), pages 1-37, November.
    5. Kangjuan Lv & Jiaqi Li & Ye Zhao, 2023. "Can Internet Construction Promote Urban Green Development? A Quasi-Natural Experiment from the “Broadband China”," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(6), pages 1-21, March.
    6. Edquist, Harald & Bergmark, Pernilla, 2024. "How is mobile broadband intensity affecting CO2 emissions? – A macro analysis," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(2).

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    JEL classification:

    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence
    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity

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