Economic crisis and benefits of the Internet: differentiated Internet usage by employment status

Using data from the Spanish Survey on Equipment and Use of ICTs in Households for 2007–2011, this paper evaluates the effect of employment status on the diffusion of the Internet among the labor force. We use a bivariate probit with sample selection model to account for a potential selection bias that arises because online usage is only observed for Internet users. Our results show that, controlling for income, employment influences online adoption and usage, and we find evidence of a digital divide in adoption and usage by education and age among the labor force. Employed individuals are more likely to have accessed the Internet and used it more frequently than the unemployed and for different activities. However, conditional on adoption, they do not use the Internet for more personal activities. These findings suggest that firms promote and subsidize Internet access, but this sponsored access does not translate into more personal use.     

Dividing or uniting Europe? Internet usage in the EU

Using Heckman’s sample selection procedure, we first analyse access to the Internet and then specific Internet usage given individual Internet access, across the EU countries using Eurobarometer data for 2004 and 2005. Internet access varies more within countries than between them. But the reverse is the case for Internet usage given access. Two specific country attributes are identified: first gross national income and the rule of law reflecting the extent to which people have confidence in the security of the Internet. Further variables also emphasize the importance of trust.     

Facets of the digital divide in Europe: Determination and extent of internet use

The primary objective of this article is to identify, given Internet accessibility, the factors that shape the decisions of individuals for personal Internet usage and its extent. Cross-sectional data from the European Social Survey database were utilized and an ordered probit model with selectivity was employed. The hypothesized link between the decision to use the Internet and the extent of usage was confirmed by the data. Household income, cost of access, demographics, media use, regional characteristics and general skill acquisition by individuals appear to correlate with Internet use and the extent of usage. In addition, a non-linear decomposition analysis was applied in order to identify the causes of the observed south/north divide. The results indicate that the observed differences in the probability of Internet use constitute a structural problem.     

Technological Progress and Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from Telecommunications Infrastructure

This paper investigates the impact of telecommunications infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa. We use the World Development Indicators database and apply the instrumental variable-generalized method of moments to a panel of 47 countries over the period 1993–2012. The results show that the Internet and mobile phones have contributed to economic growth. A one percentage point increase in Internet and mobile phone usage raises growth by 0.12 and 0.03 percentage points, respectively. Overall, the results suggest that the development of telecommunications infrastructure fosters economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. With much room for potential growth enhancement of telecommunications infrastructure, policies to expand access or reduce cost should be strongly encouraged by African governments, particularly as far as the Internet is concerned.     

互联网使用能否提升农户信贷获得水平*——基于CFPS面板数据的经验研究

基于2014—2018年中国家庭追踪调查三期面板数据，运用联合估计的条件混合处理（CMP）模型和工具变量模型，本文分析了互联网使用对农户信贷获得水平的影响效应，并采用修正样本自选择偏差的双稳健IPWRA模型进行了稳健性检验。研究发现：互联网使用对农户信贷获得水平具有显著正向影响，既可以提升农户信贷的可得性，也可以提高农户的信贷规模。就不同贷款渠道而言，互联网使用同时显著提高了农户正规和非正规信贷获得水平。异质性分析表明，互联网使用对于处于中年、兼业程度大以及中西部地区的农户信贷获得水平促进作用更大；机制分析表明，互联网使用主要通过信息搜寻、社会互动以及收入增长三种效应来提升农户信贷获得水平。因此，贯彻落实“互联网+”政策，提升农村地区的互联网覆盖率，是缓解农户融资难和决胜脱贫攻坚战役的重要政策手段。     

Determinants of adoption of Internet in Africa: Case of 17 sub-Saharan countries

This study develops two-level hierarchical model that identifies factors that favor or hamper the use of Internet in Africa. We used data from a survey covering 17 African countries. Our results confirm that urbanization and the spread of Internet infrastructures play an important role in individual decisions to adopt this technology. They also reveal that an individual will have a larger probability to use Internet if he/she has at least completed primary education.Moreover, individual characteristics such as sex, age, level of education, and a social network membership greatly influence Internet adoption. Indeed, men are more likely to use Internet than women; this probability is larger if they are young (16–30 years old) or if they attained at least secondary education level or if they are members of a social network.     

Internet usage and the income gap between self-employed individuals and employees: Evidence from China

Using longitudinal data from the China Family Panel Studies, we investigate the impact of Internet usage on the income gap between self-employed individuals and employees in China, considering the sample selection bias and individual heterogeneity issues. We divided employment statuses into three types―small entrepreneur, own-account worker, and employee. The findings reveal the following: First, the returns from Internet usage differ by employment type, which is lower for self-employed individuals than that for employees. Second, the difference in Internet usage contributes to widening the income gap, whereas the difference in the returns from Internet usage to income contributes to narrowing it. Finally, Internet usage exerts a greater impact on the income gap between employees and small entrepreneurs than that between employees and own-account workers. These empirical results suggest that the division of Internet access may exacerbate the segmentation of the formal and informal sectors in China.     

Relative demand for highly skilled workers and use of different ICT technologies

This study investigates the relationship between several indicators of ICT usage and digitalization and the relative demand for highly skilled workers. The data are based on two-digit industry-level information on seven European countries for the period 2001–2010. For manufacturing industries, static fixed-effects models show that the share of employees with internet broadband access, the diffusion of mobile internet access and the use of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and automatic data exchange combined with electronic invoicing are all significantly and positively related to skill intensity in the industries observed. For service industries, only mobile internet usage intensity is significant. Specifically for manufacturing, a 10-point increase in the percentage of firms using ERP systems is associated with an increase in the share of highly skilled workers by 0.4 percentage points. These estimates indicate that the increase in ERP system usage during the period studied accounted for 30% of the increase in the share of workers with a tertiary degree across manufacturing industries and countries. The results are robust with respect to the estimation method and the potential endogeneity of ICT.     

Peering and Settlement in the Internet: An Economic Analysis

This paper explores the implications of Internet peering in the context of a model of competing, vertically integrated Internet Access Providers. We show that if regulation forbids settlement payments between firms, there will be under-investment in capacity and under-pricing of usage, both of which lead to excessive congestion. To overcome these problems, firms that are net providers of Internet infrastructure should be allowed to charge firms that are net users. We characterize the efficient level of these access payments, assuming usage can be appropriately measured. We find that refusal to peer and the charging of settlement payments may well be efficiency enhancing.     

Demand estimation and market definition for broadband Internet services

This paper analyses residential demand for Internet access in Austria with a focus on broadband Internet connections. Austria has cable network coverage of about 50% and is, therefore, a good candidate to analyse the elasticity of demand for DSL where cable is available and where it is not. We also include mobile broadband via UMTS or HSDPA in our analysis and estimate various nested logit models to derive conclusions for market definition. The estimation results suggest that demand for DSL is elastic and that cable networks are likely to be in the same market as DSL connections both at the retail and at the wholesale level. We discuss possible implications for the regulation of wholesale broadband access markets. All views expressed are solely the authors’ and do not bind RTR or the Telekom-Control-Kommission (TKK) in any way nor are they official position of RTR or TKK.     

Conjoint analysis of demand for IP telephony: the case of Japan

With the recent diffusion of broadband (BB) services, Internet protocol (IP) telephony is expected to spread significantly in Japan. This article investigates the demand for IP telephony by using conjoint analysis. Projecting IP telephony demand also contributes to Japanese info-communication policy discussions. Two points are made. First, IP telephony is still currently considered an optional supplement or an add-on service option of high-speed BB Internet access services in Japan rather than a close substitute of existing plain old telephone service (POTS). At this point, we find little evidence that many households will promptly forsake their fixed line service for IP telephony. Second, we conclude that the key condition for the proliferation of IP telephony is the complete guarantee of quality of service (QoS), including voice quality, number portability, fax usage and emergency access, comparable to or exceeding that of existing POTS.     

Access prices,unbundling and product variety in European Internet markets

A fundamental policy in European broadband regulation is unbundled access to the local loop of the incumbent telephone company. We present comparative static results that show as the access price decreases, the retail price decreases, the variety of plans offered by Internet service providers increases and the quantity of each variety increases when a threshold condition is met. Using data from 18 European countries from 2006 to 2012, we find empirical support for these results when Internet product variety is measured by variation in download speeds.     

Financial structure and diversification of European firms

Small and medium enterprises have been shown to rely mainly on banks for funding and, unlike larger firms, rarely have direct access to capital markets. This article looks at the extent to which SMEs avail of a wider range of funding options and how their use differs across firms and countries. Across all countries, we find that firms are currently using two or three sources of finance to fund their operations and have had previous experience of other types of funding. There are some noticeable differences across countries with peripheral economies generally being less diversified. Differences across firm size and age groups are more marked than cross-country variation, with smaller and younger firms significantly more reliant on a limited set of finance types and older, larger firms having more diversified financial structures. Looking at individual sources of financing, we find that trade credit and informal sources of finance are extremely prevalent across all countries, with Irish firms being particularly likely to use them as sources of funding.     

Impact of Internet use on economic well‐being of rural households: Evidence from China

The expansion of the Internet in developing countries has important implications for the economic development of rural areas. Although many studies have investigated various benefits of Internet use, little attention has been paid to find the relationship between Internet use and the economic well‐being of rural households. This paper, therefore, investigates the effects of Internet use on household income and expenditure, using a sample of rural households from China. Both endogenous treatment regression (ETR) and unconditional quantile regression (UQR) techniques are used to identify the homogenous and heterogeneous effects of Internet use, respectively. The ETR results show that Internet use increases household income and expenditure significantly. However, the UQR results reveal that Internet use has a larger impact at the upper distributions of household income and expenditure.     

Competing cybermediaries

We examine a price competition game between two intermediaries offering to match two sides of a market on the Internet. Competition is characterized by asymmetric network externalities. We account for some specificities of cybermediation, in particular access versus usage pricing and the possibility of using the services of several intermediaries. When only registration fees are used and agents register with at most one cybermediary, there exists an equilibrium where one firm corners the market with positive profits. Introducing either fees contingent on successful matching or the possibility of registration with two cybermediaries make these profits vanish. Other types of equilibria are discussed.     

ICT Use in the Developing World: An Analysis of Differences in Computer and Internet Penetration

Using panel data for 161 countries, we explore the determinants of cross-country disparities in personal computer and Internet penetration. We find evidence indicating that income, human capital, the youth dependency ratio, telephone density, legal quality, and banking sector development are associated with technology penetration rates. Estimates from Blinder–Oaxaca decompositions comparing rates in the developed-country total to developing countries (Total, Brazil, China, Indonesia, India, Mexico, and Nigeria) reveal that the main factors responsible for low rates of technology penetration rates in developing countries are disparities in income, telephone density, legal quality, and human capital. In terms of dynamics, our results indicate fairly rapid reversion to long-run equilibrium for Internet use, and somewhat slower reversion for computer use.     

Ageing and unused capacity in Europe: is there an early retirement trap?

We address the issue of how early retirement may interact with limited use of financial markets in producing financial hardship later in life, when some risks (such as long-term care) are not insured. We argue that the presence of financially attractive early retirement schemes in a world of imperfect financial and insurance markets can lead to an 'early retirement trap'. Indeed, Europe witnesses many (early) retired individuals in financial distress. In our analysis we use data on 10 European countries, which differ in their pension and welfare systems, in prevailing retirement age and in households' access to financial markets. We find evidence that an early retirement trap exists, particularly in some Southern and Central European countries: people who retired early in life are more likely to be in financial hardship in the long run. Our analysis implies that governments should stop making early retirement attractive, let retirees go back to work, improve access to financial markets and make sure long-term care problems are adequately insured.
— Viola Angelini, Agar Brugiavini and Guglielmo Weber     

UNIVERSAL ACCESS,PARALLEL TRADE AND INCENTIVES TO INNOVATE

Governments often subsidize poorer groups in society to ensure their access to new drugs. We analyse the optimal income‐based price subsidies in a strategic environment. We show that universal access is less likely to arise when price arbitrage prevents international price discrimination. When this is not the case, under some income ranges, bilateral universal coverage can be supported by equilibrium subsidies together with bilateral partial provision. In such a case, international health policy coordination becomes relevant. We also show that asymmetric universal access to medicines across countries can arise, even when countries are ex ante symmetric, when international price discrimination is possible and governments cannot design subsidies proportional to either income or quality.     

Trends and cycles of the internet evolution and worldwide impacts

In this paper we present a quantitative analysis of the evolution of some Internet and ICT evolution indicators. It focuses on the number of Internet hosts, the Internet penetration index, the ICT development index and the software/protocols development. In addition, we analyzed the series of most impacting events building up the Internet along the last fifty years. These analyses were carried out using the multi-logistic procedure recently proposed by the authors. Our results for hosts counting, penetration index and software/protocols development are compatible with the onset of some radical changes in the Internet technology to be currently underway and we forecast new growth rate peaks to occur by 2015. The software/protocols were found to having been powered by bursts of creativity with periods of the order of the Kuznets and Kondratiev economic cycles. Similar conclusions were drawn from the series of main events building up the Internet. Despite the clear signs of worldwide improvement in the ICT infrastructure and usage between 2002 and 2007 obtained from the ICT development index, its cross-correlation with the human development index (HDI) revealed the presence of a group of countries whose improvements in the operational ICT index are disconnected from their corresponding HDI improvements.