The paper aims at empirically investigating the relationship between regulation and the capital structure of the regulated firm, A key aspect of the referred relationship pertains a leverage effect according to which debt could be increased as a response to previous physical capital investment...

We estimate the effect of broadband infrastructure, which enables high-speed internet, on economic growth in the panel of OECD countries in 1996-2007. Our instrumental-variable model derives its non-linear first stage from a logistic diffusion model where pre-existing voice-telephony and...

We analyze the demand and supply characteristics of the Indian telecommunications market, in order to assess the potential effectiveness of universal access policies in developing countries. We provide some empirical evidence on the supply and demand characteristics, using a small...

Does internet use trigger sex crime? We use unique Norwegian data on crime and internet adoption to shed light on this question. A public program with limited funding rolled out broadband access points in 2000-2008, and provides plausibly exogenous variation in internet use. Our instrumental...

How important is mastering information and communication technologies (ICT) in modern labor markets? We present the first evidence on this question, drawing on unique data that provide internationally comparable information on ICT skills in 19 countries. Our identification strategy relies on the...

This paper investigates telecommunication operator investment in broadband infrastructure after local deregulation of the wholesale broadband access market. Using a panel dataset covering all 5,598 exchange areas in the United Kingdom, we exploit regional differences in deregulation following a...

Recently, the combinatorial clock auction has become more and more common in the auctioning of telecommunication licenses. Although the auction design is complex, the promise is that bidding becomes simple - truthtelling is "close to optimal". We show that this claim is too strong. The auction...

Will telecommunications policy in the form of industry-specific regulation go away? A literature review of the five policy areas (1) termination monopoly, (2) local bottleneck access, (3) net neutrality, (4) spectrum management, and (5) universal service suggests that in some of them a move to...

Currently, U.S. and EU telecommunications policies differ in many respects. For example, wholesale access to local loops is largely deregulated in the U.S. but continues to be regulated in the EU. Or, the U.S. has an elaborate universal service policy with a set of universal service funds and...

Can digital information and communication technology (ICT) foster mass political mobilization? We use a novel geo-referenced dataset for the entire African continent between 1998 and 2012 on the coverage of mobile phone signal together with georeferenced data from multiple sources on the...