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...

Non-pecuniary incentives motivated by insights from psychology ("nudges") have been shown to be effective tools to change behavior in a variety of fields. An often unanswered question relevant for public policy is whether these promising interventions can be scaled up. In cooperation with a...

In this paper, we use a unique dataset on switching between mobile handsets in a sample of about 8,623 subscribers using tariffs without handset subsidies from a single mobile operator on a monthly basis between July 2011 and December 2014. We estimate a discrete choice model in which we account...

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...

We evaluate the impact of a major European state aid programme for broadband deployment applied to rural areas in the German state of Bavaria in the years 2010 and 2011. Using matched difference-in-differences estimation strategies, we find that aided municipalities have - depending on broadband...

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...

In this paper I review the Dutch UMTS-auction that took place in the summer of 2000 and which, in contrast to the UK and German auctions, was generally considered to be a major flop. I analyse the policy process leading to the auction as well as the bidding behaviour in the auction, and provide...

We evaluate the welfare effects of the Roam-Like-At-Home regulation, which drastically re-duced the price of accessing the mobile internet for EU residents when traveling abroad in the European Economic Area. Estimates from individual-level usage data suggest that consumer surplus increased by...