Documents Niebel, Thomas 4 results

"The economic impacts of telecommunications networks and broadband internet: a survey, ZEW Discussion Paper No. 16-056, Mannheim.
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 investigating the impacts on economic growth, employment and regional development as well as productivity and firm performance. Eventually, the survey does not only allow the identification of main research gaps but also provides useful information for policy makers on the significance and importance of communication networks for social welfare."

"The objective of the study “The sectoral impact of digitisation of the economy” is to assess productivity effects of digitisation at the sectoral level and to deduce employment effects for the EU15, the US, China and Japan for 14 industries for the years 2000 to 2021. Negative substitution effects are moderately larger than positive price and income effects in most sectors. Additionally, productivity increases in ICT production itself contribute positively to employment, such that on average, digitisation has an overall effect close to zero on employment."

"Although information and communication technologies (ICT) consume energy themselves, they are considered to have the potential to reduce overall energy intensity within economic sectors. While previous empirical evidence is based on aggregated data, this is the first large-scale empirical study on the relationship between ICT and energy intensity at the firm level. For this purpose, we employ administrative panel data on 28,600 manufacturing firms from German Statistical Offices collected between 2009 and 2017. Our results confirm a statistically significant and robust negative link between software capital as an indicator for the firm-level degree of digitalization and energy intensity, but the effect size is rather small. Hence, we conclude that energy intensity reductions related to the use of digital technologies are lower than expected."