Broadband internet availability and establishments’ employment growth in Germany: evidence from instrumental variables estimations

Bastian Stockinger ()
Additional contact information
Bastian Stockinger: Institute for Employment Research (IAB)

Journal for Labour Market Research, 2019, vol. 53, issue 1, 1-23

Abstract: Abstract This study investigates the effect of broadband internet availability on German establishments’ employment growth. The database used is a random sample of business establishments, augmented by the local availability of broadband. The observation period is 2005–2010, when broadband was introduced in rural regions of Western Germany and in large parts of Eastern Germany. For the Western German subsample, technical frictions in broadband rollout are exploited to obtain exogenous variation in broadband availability. The findings indicate a negative (albeit not very robust) employment growth effect of broadband availability for Western German manufacturers, and a robustly positive effect for Western German service establishments, including most knowledge-intensive industries. For Eastern Germany, a similar identification strategy is potentially available, but turns out invalid in this particular setting. An alternative identification approach (a long difference model) indicates positive employment growth effects in both sectors for Eastern Germany. Overall, the findings suggest that broadband expansion has helped create jobs in firms which use broadband intensely.

Keywords: Labor demand; Employment growth; Broadband internet; Technological change; Regional labor markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J23 O33 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1186/s12651-019-0257-0 Abstract (text/html)

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:spr:jlabrs:v:53:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1186_s12651-019-0257-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/12651

DOI: 10.1186/s12651-019-0257-0

Access Statistics for this article

Journal for Labour Market Research is currently edited by Joachim Möller

More articles in Journal for Labour Market Research from Springer, Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().