IMPACT OF BROADBAND ON RESEARCH, INNOVATION AND EMPLOYMENT

Author

YAGHA RAJ JOSHI, Southern Illinois University CarbondaleFollow

Date of Award

6-1-2021

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Economics

First Advisor

Watts , Alison

Second Advisor

Dai, Chifeng

Abstract

I begin chapter I with an examination of the effect of broadband on quantitative and qualitative aspects of research. This paper investigates whether access to the Internet is positively correlated with journal articles. I employ data sets from the world bank for 190 countries from 2000 to 2018 and run two types of regressions: Poisson and Negative Binomial. Our results indicate that broadband facilitates to write more journal articles and get more citations. My second chapter concerns access to broadband, fixed telephone, and mobile cellular is expected to have a positive impact on innovations. This paper investigates whether or not access to the Internet and telephone is positively correlated with innovation. We employ data sets from the world bank for 190 countries from 2000 to 2018 and run two types of regressions: OLS and fixed effect. Within each method, we examine how the income-level of the countries affects the answer. Our results indicate that broadband, telephone, and mobile cellular facilitates innovation. We explore two possible explanations for this: i) there are increasing marginal benefits of broadband deployment, ii) broadband creates a positive externality that indirectly enhances innovation. The conclusion is robust to various income level countries. In the third chapter, I examine how a connection to the internet and telephone affect labor market outcomes. We employ datasets from the world bank for 190 countries from 2000 to 2018 and employ three types of regressions: OLS, fixed effect estimator, and non-linear model. Within each method, we examine how the income status, gender, education level affects the answer.