Ubiquitous high-speed fiber-based and mobile broadband availability is a key economic policy goal in the European Union and other developed countries. Policymakers seek to boost economic growth, productivity, and employment, especially in remote areas, through ambitious broadband targets and...

Fibre-deployment of next-generation communications networks is currently a major challenge for investing firms as well as for national regulators and is also subject to hot debates at EU level. This work examines the role of regulatory policies and competition controlling for relevant supply and...

Our survey reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on all alternative policies to promote the deployment of new fiber-based communications infrastructure. Since such investment is expected to induce substantial positive externalities, dynamic efficiency becomes a particularly important...

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. We find that aided municipalities have—depending on quality— between 16.8 and 23.2 percentage points higher broadband...

In this paper, we study how the coexistence of access regulations for legacy (copper) and fiber networks shapes the incentives to invest in network infrastructure. To this end, we develop a theoretical model explaining investment incentives by incumbent telecom operators and heterogeneous...

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...

We provide a structured overview of the quantitative literature on the economic impacts of telecommunications networks and broadband internet. Differentiating between wireline and wireless technologies as well as broadband availability and broadband adoption, respectively, we review studies...

This paper provides evidence on the migration from an “old” technology to a “new” technology, taking into account the impact that regulatory interventions on the old one might have on the incentives to invest and adopt the new one. This analysis has been applied to a sample of EU27...

Der "Megatrend" Digitalisierung bietet auf Basis von Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien (IKT) erhebliche Potenziale für Effizienzverbesserungen und die Reduktion von Transaktionskosten in beinahe allen relevanten gesamtwirtschaftlichen Bereichen. Neben den bereits in der Literatur...