Ultra-broadband investment and economic resilience: Evidence from the Covid-19 pandemic

Laura Abrardi and Lorien Sabatino

Telecommunications Policy, 2023, vol. 47, issue 2

Abstract: We study the role of ultra-broadband infrastructures in reducing the economic recession caused by the 2020 pandemic. We exploit the variation in GDP and employment that happened between 2019 and 2020 as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak, and we investigate whether UBB investments had an impact on economic resilience. We use micro-level data on UBB exposure in 2019 matched with municipality-level information on local GDP and employment levels based on tax declarations for the period 2019–2020. We address the endogeneity between UBB and local income by exploiting the distance from the closest backbone node of the upstream telecommunication network. We find that exposure to UBB mitigates the negative effect of the pandemic on local employment. One additional year of UBB exposure increases local employment by 1.3 percentage points. The effect is stronger in areas hit more severely by the pandemic, thus confirming the role of advanced broadband infrastructures on the economic resilience from negative shocks.

Keywords: Ultra-broadband (UBB); Fiber-based networks; Resilience; Covid-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D22 D24 L96 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308596122001823
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:telpol:v:47:y:2023:i:2:s0308596122001823

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/30471/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... /30471/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.telpol.2022.102480

Access Statistics for this article

Telecommunications Policy is currently edited by Erik Bohlin

More articles in Telecommunications Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().