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on Information and Communication Technologies |
| By: | Jessica Van Parys; Zach Y. Brown |
| Abstract: | High-speed internet has increased the amount of information available in health care markets. Online information may improve health outcomes if it reduces information frictions and helps patients choose higher quality providers or causes providers to improve quality. We examine how health outcomes for common procedures in Medicare changed after broadband internet rolled out across ZIP Codes from 1999 to 2008. Estimates imply that broadband expansion improved health outcomes by 5%. Broadband access primarily helped patients choose higher-quality providers; we find less evidence that broadband improved provider quality. We use a simple structural model to decompose the improvements in patient outcomes over time. Counterfactual simulations imply that broadband roll-out was responsible for about 12% of the improvement in outcomes by the end of the period. |
| JEL: | I10 L15 L86 |
| Date: | 2023–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31579&r=ict |
| By: | Mahdi Ghodsi (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses how regulatory convergence in different categories of technical barriers to trade (TBTs) imposed on imports of goods in information and communications technology (ICT) globally affected the values, volumes, and unit values of imported goods during the period 1996-2019. Keywords cited in TBTs that are notified to the World Trade Organization (WTO) give an indication of the regulatory objectives behind the imposition of TBTs. MAST also classifies TBTs based on their applicability, procedural and administrative uses, factors which will also be taken into consideration in the analysis. However, objectives of TBTs may provide better insights to policymakers. TBTs are non-discriminatory measures that are imposed unilaterally on all trading partners and on domestic producers. It is not feasible to analyse unilateral TBTs in a gravity setting, as they are excluded by the introduction of country-product-time fixed effects that control for multilateral resistances. However, regulatory convergence in TBT categories is a bilateral time-varying variable that is analysed in a gravity model in this paper. The empirical results suggest that regulatory convergence between trading partners in some TBT categories stimulates import values and volumes. However, the impact is very heterogeneous across TBT objectives and classes and across ICT product categories. |
| Keywords: | Information and communications technology, regulatory convergence, technical barrier to trade, World Trade Organization, Pseudo Poisson Maximum Likelihood |
| JEL: | F13 F14 |
| Date: | 2023–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wii:wpaper:229&r=ict |
| By: | Yifeng Philip Chen; Edward J. Oughton; Jakub Zagdanski; Maggie Mo Jia; Peter Tyler |
| Abstract: | Broadband connectivity is regarded as generally having a positive macroeconomic effect, but we lack evidence as to how it affects key economic activity metrics, such as firm creation, at a very local level. This analysis models the impact of broadband Next Generation Access (NGA) on new business creation at the local level over the 2011-2015 period in England, United Kingdom, using high-resolution panel data. After controlling for a range of factors, we find that faster broadband speeds brought by NGA technologies have a positive effect on the rate of business growth. We find that in England between 2011-2015, on average a one percentage increase in download speeds is associated with a 0.0574 percentage point increase in the annual growth rate of business establishments. The primary hypothesised mechanism behind the estimated relationship is the enabling effect that faster broadband speeds have on innovative business models based on new digital technologies and services. Entrepreneurs either sought appropriate locations that offer high quality broadband infrastructure (contributing to new business establishment growth), or potentially enjoyed a competitive advantage (resulting in a higher survival rate). The findings of this study suggest that aspiring to reach universal high capacity broadband connectivity is economically desirable, especially as the costs of delivering such service decline. |
| Date: | 2023–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2308.14734&r=ict |
| By: | Gisli Gylfason (PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement) |
| Abstract: | How does social media affect the composition of political protests in the United States? Using early adoption of Twitter at the 2007 South by Southwest (SXSW) festival as a plausibly exogenous source of variation in county-level Twitter penetration (Müller & Schwarz, 2023), and comprehensive data on protest events, this paper finds that Twitter penetration increases the frequency of protests overall, but also radicalizes them. Twitter disproportionately fuels protests with participation of "extreme" groups-groups that are particularly militant, radical, or hateful. These effects do not depend on the topic of the protest nor political leaning. I also present survey evidence suggesting that coordination is not the only mechanism driving these results: An increase in county-level Twitter penetration implies an increase in respondent's willingness to justify violence against other people, normalizing the participation in extreme groups and extreme protests. |
| Keywords: | Twitter, Collective action, Protests, Social media, Information Technology |
| Date: | 2023–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:psewpa:halshs-04188189&r=ict |