EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The Skill Complementarity of Broadband Internet

Anders Akerman, Ingvil Gaarder and Magne Mogstad

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2015, vol. 130, issue 4, 1781-1824

Abstract: Does adoption of broadband internet in firms enhance labor productivity and increase wages? Is this technological change skill biased or factor neutral? We combine several Norwegian data sets to answer these questions. A public program with limited funding rolled out broadband access points and provides plausibly exogenous variation in the availability and adoption of broadband internet in firms. Our results suggest that broadband internet improves (worsens) the labor market outcomes and productivity of skilled (unskilled) workers. We explore several possible explanations for the skill complementarity of broadband internet. We find suggestive evidence that broadband adoption in firms complements skilled workers in executing nonroutine abstract tasks, and substitutes for unskilled workers in performing routine tasks. Taken together, our findings have important implications for the ongoing policy debate over government investment in broadband infrastructure to encourage productivity and wage growth. JEL Codes: J23, J24, J31, O33.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (346)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/qje/qjv028 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Skill Complementarity of Broadband Internet (2015) Downloads
Working Paper: The Skill Complementarity of Broadband Internet (2013) Downloads
Working Paper: The Skill Complementarity of Broadband Internet (2013) Downloads
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:oup:qjecon:v:130:y:2015:i:4:p:1781-1824

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics is currently edited by Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Katz, Nathan Nunn, Andrei Shleifer and Stefanie Stantcheva

More articles in The Quarterly Journal of Economics from President and Fellows of Harvard College
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-22
Handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:130:y:2015:i:4:p:1781-1824