Econometric error nullifies finding of the impact of broadband speed on county-level employment

Brian Whitacre, Md Rafayet Alam and Bento Lobo

Information Economics and Policy, 2018, vol. 44, issue C, 58-60

Abstract: In a 2017 Information Economics and Policy article, Bai (2017) used a pooled first-differenced regression to find a positive relationship between broadband availability and the county-level employment rate for 8 states between 2011 and 2014. Upon further investigation, these results were driven by an error that inappropriately calculated differences across counties (and years) in the dataset. This error has been acknowledged by the author. When corrected, the specification in the original paper produces no statistical significance for any of the broadband variables of interest. Thus, the reported finding of a positive association between broadband speed and employment is not valid. This updated result is in agreement with several other studies using the first-differenced methodology and county-level data from the U.S., and suggests that more work needs to be done to refine existing models and units of analysis to uncover the relationship (if one exists) between broadband speed and employment.

Date: 2018
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:iepoli:v:44:y:2018:i:c:p:58-60

DOI: 10.1016/j.infoecopol.2018.05.001

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