They say in the paper: “We find that increased access to broadband internet in a county leads to a reduction in
poverty, and an increase in income, employment, and the number of employees and
establishments by zip code.”
However, I can’t find the part of the paper that actually justifies that claim. That doesn’t mean it’s not there, I just couldn’t find it in a quick skim.
There’s a section “Potential Mechanisms” on page 18 of the PDF.
“Table 4 presents the effect of increased broadband availability on several county level economic outcomes. Each column includes all controls and fixed effects included our preferred specification. Column 1 reports that the result of a 10% increase in a county's population with access to broadband internet is a reduction in poverty rate of 0.089 percentage points. Column 2 indicates that a ten percentage point increase in broadband availability results in a reduction of unemployment in the county of 0.013 percentage points.”
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 30.2 ms ] threadNow I wonder if they also addressed correlation-vs-causation? Perhaps economic growth causes both fewer suicides and more broadband internet?
However, I can’t find the part of the paper that actually justifies that claim. That doesn’t mean it’s not there, I just couldn’t find it in a quick skim.
“Table 4 presents the effect of increased broadband availability on several county level economic outcomes. Each column includes all controls and fixed effects included our preferred specification. Column 1 reports that the result of a 10% increase in a county's population with access to broadband internet is a reduction in poverty rate of 0.089 percentage points. Column 2 indicates that a ten percentage point increase in broadband availability results in a reduction of unemployment in the county of 0.013 percentage points.”