The Benefits from Bundling Demand in K-12 Broadband Procurement

Gaurab Aryal (), Charles Murry, Pallavi Pal and Arnab Palit

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: We study a new market design for K-12 school broadband procurement that switched from school-specific bidding to a system that bundled schools into groups. Using an event study approach, we estimate that the program reduced internet prices by \$9.17 (55\%) per Mbps per month while increasing bandwidth by 380.06 Mbps (136\%). These benefits resulted primarily from mitigating exposure risk in broadband procurement - the risk that providers win too few contracts to cover their fixed infrastructure costs. Using a bounds approach, we show robustness of our estimates and document that participants saved between \$1.61 million and \$3.48 million, while their existing federal E-rate subsidy was \$2.47 million, and experienced substantial welfare gains.

Date: 2024-02, Revised 2025-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ict and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.07277 Latest version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Benefits from Bundling Demand in K-12 Broadband Procurement (2025)
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:arx:papers:2402.07277

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().