Information Economics and Policy最新文献

We estimate productivity gains and employment effects of ultrafast broadband (UFB) adoption and test whether effects differ when firms undertake complementary organizational investments. Using an IV strategy based on proximity to schools (that were targeted in the UFB roll-out), we find that UFB adoption has a positive impact on multifactor productivity (MFP) over a four year horizon and a negative impact on employment (potentially due to increased outsourcing). The positive MFP effects are most clearly observed in firms that also make complementary investments to gain the most benefit from their UFB. The negative employment effects are observed especially in firms with initial low computer intensity.

This study estimates the price elasticity of mobile voice communication in developed and developing countries using quarterly operator data from 2000 to 2017. Using a dynamic panel model through system-GMM, the study finds that the demand price elasticity is higher for operators in developed countries. Controlling for cross-price elasticity with internet data prices reveals that voice communication is a substitute for internet data usage in developed countries. Another important finding is that, for operators in developing countries, the price elasticity decreases with market development level, whereas it increases for those in developed countries. Demand for mobile voice communication is thus more sensitive to price changes in the less penetrated markets in developing countries and the mature markets in developed countries. Furthermore, over time, price elasticity has decreased across operators in developing countries, highlighting the need for updating regulatory frameworks for the telecommunications sector to reflect the sector's various developments. In addition, when formulating regulatory and tax policies, some important economic factors, such as income level and domestic market characteristics, should be considered to avoid losses in consumer welfare. The high estimated price elasticities suggest that operators do not have an obvious interest in engaging in collusive behavior that would hinder competition. Moreover, since there is no differential effect due to operators’ positions or market shares, asymmetric regulation of the dominant operators should be avoided.

Much like the music and movies industries before, the comic book industry has entered the digital markets and faces the unfair competition of unauthorized sources. I conduct a survey of comic book readers to analyse the relationship between the pirate channels and the sales of comic books from the top American publishers. My data allows me to construct a time panel of comics readers and calculate the substitution rate between the paid and unpaid channels of comics acquisition. I find that piracy is negatively related to comics sales though mainly those of limited series. Moreover, for digital comics the relationship is observable only for a smaller group of readers with high valuations of digital formats. I also show that the digital comics – both paid and unpaid – are typically considered as inferior by the readers. With the price of digitally released new comics set at the same level as their print versions, this suggests that readers who do not want to pay the full price for print copies are more likely to use pirate sources than to switch to legal digital channels. Still, both paid and unpaid readership is associated with higher interest in other types of comics-based media such as movies or video games. This suggests that comics piracy might carry some indirect positive effects. As this aspect could improve the negotiating position of comic book authors it should be studied further.

We examine the impact of removing Digital Rights Management (DRM) from electronic book devices. We derive a Bayesian hierarchical logit model based on the consumer’s utility maximization problem and estimate the model using data from a choice-based survey. We then simulate the counterfactual market outcomes when DRM is removed; on average, the consumer surplus increases nontrivially holding everything else constant. However, the gain in consumer surplus is diminished when we re-calibrate e-book device prices. Further, if there is a negative shock to content supply, then the consumer surplus could in fact decrease after DRM removal.

Using unique data from a systematic roll-out of broadband infrastructure in rural areas, we provide evidence on the impact of high-speed internet via broadband on three main sectors of economy: retail, agriculture, and manufacturing. Our instrumental variable model, which relies upon the timing of the roll-out at the first stage, shows that in general broadband access does not foster economic growth, but positively affects the retail sector, with no effect on the manufacturing and agricultural sectors. We also find that the biggest effects are found for speeds below 10 Mbps. We supplement our findings by exploring potential mechanisms that could drive the results.

This paper develops a model of investigative journalism and media capture in the market for news with the depreciation of the value of news over time and a limited exclusive supply period of original news due to copying by other media outlets. We make distinctions between traditional media outlets that engage in investigative journalism and fringe digital media that mainly copy and spread original news created elsewhere. We show that the quantity and quality of news with investigative journalism decrease and media capture is more likely as digital technologies induce a lower fixed cost of entry for the fringe firms and a shorter exclusive supply period of news. These results may explain why there is scant evidence for the conventional view that more media outlets lead to higher quality news and less political capture, despite proliferation of news and information outlets in the digital age.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is often thought of as a uniformly positive tool making governments more transparent, accountable, and less corrupt. However, the evidence on it is mixed and often misunderstood. Hence, this article carries out a systematic stocktaking of ICT tools’ impact on corruption, offering a nuanced and context-dependent assessment. The tools reviewed are digital public services, crowdsourcing platforms, whistleblowing tools, transparency portals, distributed ledger technology, and artificial intelligence. We scrutinise the evidence both on ICTs’ anticorruption effectiveness and misuse for corruption. Drawing on the commonalities across technologies, we find that ICT can support anti-corruption by impacting public scrutiny in numerous ways: enabling reporting on corruption, promoting transparency and accountability, facilitating citizen participation and government-citizen interactions. However, ICT can also provide new corruption opportunities through the dark web, cryptocurrencies, or the misuse of technologies such as centralised databases. The introduction of ICT tools does not automatically translate into anti-corruption outcomes; rather, impact hinges on the matching between ICT tools and the local context, including support for and skills in using technology.

There are large variations in research output among nations despite the rapid globalization progress. This article provides a new angle to help explain such variations. In this article, we study the impact of internet penetration on the research output of an economy. Using a country-level panel dataset, we find that higher internet penetration increases the volume of research output in an economy. The results are robust to a number of specifications, including an instrumental variable approach that addresses the endogeneity of internet penetration. We also find some evidence showing that the impact of internet penetration on research output quantity decreases as the size of fixed broadband users increase in an economy. The effects of internet access on research quality is less conclusive. Results suggest that broadening the access of internet is important for research output boosting or innovation in general.

Whether or not the option to work remotely increases firm labour productivity is theoretically ambiguous. We use a rich and representative sample of Portuguese firms, and within-firm variation in the policy of remote electronic access – a key prerequisite for remote work – over the period 2011–2016, to empirically assess the relationship between remote access and firm labour productivity. Based on estimations of models with firm-fixed effects, we find a significantly negative association, on average, between remote access and productivity. However, we also find a substantial degree of heterogeneity across different categories of firms, where the association between remote access and productivity is significantly positive for firms that undertake R&D activities. Our findings suggest that the possibility of working remotely, as proxied by the possibility of remote access, is more likely to be harmful for productivity in non-exporting, small firms that do not do R&D, and that employ a workforce with a below-average skill level.

We analyse an oligopoly model where mobile operators may charge subscribers for placing and receiving calls. We compare the CPP equilibrium (where receiving calls is free) with the RPP equilibrium (where placing and receiving calls are priced equally). Reducing termination rates leads to lower prices and higher penetration under CPP, but has reversed effects under RPP. No termination rate yields efficiency under either retail regime. Comparing EU practice (CPP with termination regulated at cost) and US practice (RPP with Bill and Keep), we find that total surplus is higher in the US when the value of receiving calls is very high, but both producer and consumer surplus are higher in the EU for intermediate values of the call externality. If call externality is higher (resp., lower), consumers (resp., producers) are better off in the US.