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on Information and Communication Technologies |
| By: | Beuermann, Diether W. (Department of Economics, University of Maryland) |
| Abstract: | This paper provides evidence on the effects of access to telecommunications technologies on agricultural profitability and human capital investment decisions among highly isolated villages in rural Peru. I exploit a quasi-natural experiment, in which the Peruvian government through the Fund for Investments in Telecommunications (FITEL) provided at least one public (satellite) payphone to 6,509 rural villages that did not previously have any kind of communication services (either landlines or cell phones). The intervention provided these phones mainly between years 2001 and 2004. I show that the timing of the intervention was uncorrelated with baseline outcomes and exploit differences in timing using a uniquely constructed (unbalanced) panel of treated villages spanning the years 1997 through 2007. The main findings suggest that phone access generated increases of 16 percent in the value per kilogram received by farmers for their agricultural production, and a 23.7 percent reduction in agricultural costs. Moreover, this income shock translated into a reduction in child (6 – 13 years old) market work of 13.7 percentage points and a reduction in child agricultural work of 9.2 percentage points. Overall, the evidence suggests a dominant income effect in the utilization of child labor. |
| Keywords: | Telecommunications Technologies, Peru, Child Labor |
| JEL: | O1 O3 Q13 Q16 |
| Date: | 2011–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rbp:wpaper:2011-002&r=ict |
| By: | Gil, Ricard (IESE Business School) |
| Abstract: | This paper empirically examines the relation between product market competition and vertical integration in the Spanish local TV industry. For this reason, I use a data set of Spanish local TV stations that provides station level information on vertical integration and product market competition, as well as other station and market characteristics, for the years 1996, 1999 and 2002. During this period, changes in regulation in this industry had a strong impact on the level of market competition faced by local TV stations. I use differences in market structure across markets and years to empirically study the relation between vertical integration and competition. My results show that there exists a negative relation between vertical integration and market competition. I also find that despite the fact that private stations are less likely to integrate content production, they are more likely to do so the higher the number of competing stations in their coverage area. Private stations do so because by increasing the percentage of content produced in-house they differentiate themselves from competition and therefore soften competition and maximize profits. |
| Keywords: | market competition; local TV Industry; product; vertical integration; |
| Date: | 2011–01–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ebg:iesewp:d-0893&r=ict |
| By: | Mario Forni; Luca Gambetti |
| Abstract: | We derive necessary and sufficient conditions under which a set of variables is informationally sufficient, i.e. it contains enough information to estimate the structural shocks with a VAR model. Based on such conditions, we suggest a procedure to test for informational sufficiency. Moreover, we show how to amend the VAR if informational sufficiency is rejected. We apply our procedure to a VAR including TFP, unemployment and per-capita hours worked. We find that the three variables are not informationally sufficient. When adding missing information, the effects of technology shocks change dramatically. |
| Keywords: | Structural VAR, non-fundamentalness, information, FAVAR models, technology shocks. |
| JEL: | C32 E32 E62 |
| Date: | 2011–02–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aub:autbar:863.11&r=ict |