 Subsidies and substitution: An empirical study of the lifeline programTelecommunications Policy, 2021, vol. 45, issue 1 Abstract: In an effort to expand the use of telecommunications services by low-income Americans, the Federal Communications Commission's Lifeline program offers subsidies to qualifying low-income households. In recent years, the program has undergone significant reform to reduce the documented waste, fraud and abuse that accompanies many subsidy programs including Lifeline. The Commission has also questioned the efficiency of the program, if not the need for it, based on the argument that most Lifeline subscribers would obtain service without the subsidy. To quantify the displacement of regular paid accounts for subsidized Lifeline subscriptions, panel data and several empirical methods are used to quantify the relationship between the Lifeline and paid accounts. The analysis reveals no displacement effect, so Lifeline accounts are added to the total count of wireless subscriptions. A separating equilibrium, provided here, may explain these findings. Date: 2021 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:telpol:v:45:y:2021:i:1:s0308596120301658 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1016/j.telpol.2020.102075 Access Statistics for this article Telecommunications Policy is currently edited by Erik Bohlin More articles in Telecommunications Policy from Elsevier |
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