Telecommunications Policy

Does federal money for rural broadband change the economies of the places that receive it? Any answer rests on a comparison between funded places and unfunded ones, and the unfunded side of that comparison is this paper’s subject.

Despite longer lifespans, many people keep feeling “time poor,” often struggling to complete daily tasks. This challenge is most pronounced among women, who frequently have disproportionate domestic labor responsibilities, and low-income individuals, who frequently lack the resources to outsource time-intensive activities. As time poverty reinforces and perpetuates social inequalities, policies to alleviate it, such as reducing time spent on errands like queuing for goods and services, can play a key role in addressing these disparities.

The regulation and competition within the electronic communications market has changed fundamentally over the last 25 years. Initially, the focus was on opening up previously monopolistic telecommunications markets. The electronic communications markets, which were originally clearly demarcated, have since given way to a highly dynamic and complex ICT ecosystem consisting of diverse market participants, technologies, infrastructures, digital services, platforms, and political objectives.

Using the 2014-2021 waves of Spain's ICT-H household panel, we track Internet trust for 59,648 users across 130,013 person-year observations. Employing a correlated random-effects ordered-probit model, we find that improvements in digital skills and first-hand use of transactional services are the strongest predictors of higher reported trust, while traditional socio-economic markers show comparatively weaker associations.

Using nationally representative Quality of Life Survey microdata for 2020–2022, this paper examines who worked from home in Colombia and how WFH is associated with wages, job satisfaction, and weekly hours. A Digital Divide Index for Colombia's employed population has been developed. The results show that WFH is strongly associated with educational attainment, gender, age, firm size, and economic sector. Controlling for regions and economic sectors reveals a positive association between WFH, wages, and job satisfaction, whereas the relationship with weekly hours worked is negative.