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on Information and Communication Technologies |
| By: | González Chapela, Jorge |
| Abstract: | The large negative impact of income on time spent online has been attributed to a negative own-price effect created by variation in the opportunity cost of time across internet users. Nonetheless, the coefficient on income could also be capturing a negative income effect: High-income users could reduce time spent online to consume, for example, leisure activities of higher quality. This paper estimates a demand function for time online using a time-use survey containing information on household income and individual labor earnings. In accordance with the negative income effect hypothesis, income still exerts a large negative impact after earnings are controlled for, whereas the response to earnings is negative only in certain ranges of the earnings distribution. |
| Keywords: | Internet usage; Shadow value of time; Spanish Time Use Survey; Type II Tobit model. |
| JEL: | J22 L86 |
| Date: | 2014–07–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:57302&r=ict |
| By: | Christos Genakos; Tommaso Valletti |
| Abstract: | We re-consider the impact that regulation of call termination on mobile phones has had on mobile customers' bills. Using a large panel covering 27 countries, we find that the "waterbed" phenomenon, initially observed until early 2006, becomes insignificant on average over the 10-year period, 2002-2011. We argue that this is related to the changing nature of the industry, whereby mobile-to-mobile traffic now plays a much bigger role compared to fixed-to-mobile calls in earlier periods. Over the same decade, we find no evidence that regulation caused a reduction in mobile operators' profits and investments. |
| Keywords: | Mobile telephony, termination rates, waterbed effect |
| JEL: | D12 D43 L5 L96 L98 |
| Date: | 2014–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1282&r=ict |