Published and Forthcoming Papers:

Digital Highways and Firm Turnover (with Carlo Cambini)

Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 2023, Volume 32, 673-713

The Impact of Ultra-Broadband on Labor Income: An Event Study Approach (with Carlo Cambini and Laura Abrardi)

Forthcoming at Economics of Innovation and New Technology

The Faster the Better? Advanced Internet Access and Student Performance (with Carlo Cambini and Sarah Zaccagni) 

Forthcoming  at Telecommunications Policy

Ultra-Fast Broadband Access and Productivity:  Evidence from Italian Firms (with Carlo Cambini and Elena Grinza) 

International Journal of Industrial Organization, 2023, Volume 86, 102901

Ultra-broadband Investment and Economic Resilience: Evidence from the Covid-19 Pandemic (with Laura Abrardi)

Telecommunications Policy, 2023, Volume 47, 102480 

Privacy regulation and online concentration during demand peaks: evidence from the E-commerce sector (with Geza Sapi) 

Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, 2023, 50, 265-282

The Impact of Privacy Regulation on Web Traffic: Evidence from the GDPR (with Raffaele Congiu and Geza Sapi) 

Information Economics and Policy, 2022, Volume 61, 101003 

Online Privacy and Market Structure: Theory and Evidence (with Geza Sapi) 

Information Economics and Policy, 2022, Volume 60, 100985 

Working Papers:

Economic Benefits of New Broadband Network Coverage and Service Adoption: Evidence from OECD Member States (with Wolfgang Briglauer, Carlo Cambini, and Klaus Gugler)

Accepted at Industrial and Corporate Change

A broad-scale rollout and adoption of new broadband networks and services, respectively, are expected to generate innovative services for consumers and create a high potential for productivity increases and economic growth. However, there is no evidence available on the causal impact of both broadband coverage and adoption on economic outcomes, which we measure as gross domestic product (GDP). Moreover, no study has yet simultaneously considered the impact of both new wireline broadband based on fiber-optic technologies and wireless (mobile) broadband based on 3G+/4G technologies. Distinguishing these effects is of crucial relevance for the efficient design of broadband policies. To provide reliable evidence on causal effects, we utilize comprehensive panel data for 32 OECD countries for the years 2002–2020 and panel fixed-effects estimators including instrumental variables estimation. Our results show that both fixed and mobile broadband adoption exert a substantial and significant impact on GDP, while network deployment per se exhibits only minor multiplier-related effects on GDP per capita. Contemporaneous effects of a 1% increase in fixed broadband adoption impact GDP per capita growth in a range of 0.026% to 0.034%, while a 1% increase in mobile broadband adoption contributes between 0.092% and 0.102%. While the impact of contemporaneous mobile broadband adoption is substantially higher, fixed broadband adoption shows stronger dynamic and cumulative effects, as well as larger effects in later deployment periods. Generally, our results are consistent with the notion that the diffusion of technologies to substantial proportions of the population is most important in driving economic growth. 

Information Technology and Road Safety (with Giorgio Caramma)

Revision requested by Regional Science and Urban Economics

In this paper, we study how information technology (IT) affects road safety through higher enforcement of traffic laws. Thanks to unique administrative geo-localized data on the universe of road accidents in a major Italian city, we assess the impact of IT on road safety within a quasi-random experiment that exploits the roll-out of intelligent red-light cameras in road intersections. Our findings suggest that IT-based enforcement significantly reduces accidents, but have negligible effects on injuries, as it affects mostly accidents that do not involve casualties. The impact is extremely local, and it is not driven by displacement effects toward uncontrolled roads. Exploring potential mechanisms, we find that the increase in road safety can be explained by higher coordination: IT improves coordination among road users by restraining them toward more compliant behavior. In turn, this affects overall road safety. Finally, a simple cost-benefit analysis shows significant savings compared to police patrols.

Advanced Digital Technologies and Firm-Level Employment Outcomes (with Laura Abrardi, Carlo Cambini, and Elena Grinza) - Under review

This paper investigates the effects of ultra-fast broadband (UBB) availability on firms’ em- ployment levels and their workforce composition. We utilize a unique and comprehensive municipality-level data set on the deployment of UBB connections in Italy, which began in 2015. Exploiting information on firms’ locations, we match this municipality-level data set with a rich administrative matched employer-employee balanced data set from 2012 to 2019. To address the endogeneity of UBB, we leverage the physical distance between each municipality and the nearest optical packet backbone node. Our instrumental variable re- gressions suggest a positive and significant effect of UBB on overall firm-level employment. When considering different categories of workers, by job contract type and the skill content of jobs, as well as the technological intensity of firms, we detect substantially differentiated UBB effects. We find complementarity effects of UBB with high-level jobs, particularly in the high-tech sector. Moreover, only for low-tech firms, we document a substitution effect of UBB with qualified blue-collar jobs.

Work in Progress:

• Cultural Exception? The Impact of Price Regulation on Prices and Variety in the Market for Books (with Christos Genakos, Mario Pagliero, and Tommaso Valletti) - Draft coming soon!

• Broadband and Innovation (with Carlo Cambini, Pierluigi Murro, Fabiano Schivardi, and Francesco Sobbrio)

• The Skill-biased Effects of Market Power (with Matteo Broso, Carlo Cambini, Francesca Lotti, and Giacomo Rosso)

• Privacy and Online Security (with Laura Abrardi and Geza Sapi)

Policy Reports:

Exploring Aspects of the State of Competition in the EU, European Commission, DG-COMP

There is growing evidence that over the past few decades competition across markets in the EU may have weakened: industry concentration and markups appear to have increased, while the gap between market leaders and followers seems to have widened and business dynamism seems to have declined. Against this background, this report investigates four important aspects of the state of competition in the EU. First, six sectoral cross-country price-concentration studies provide qualitative and, for mobile telecoms and airlines, empirical evidence that higher concentration seems to be associated with higher prices. Secondly, an analysis of the evolution of ‘Global Superstars’ (i.e. the most profitable of the world’s largest firms) finds that their profit rates have increased significantly over the last 25 years, and that the distribution of profits has become more skewed. We also study how Global Superstars in the IT, pharma and consumer goods sectors are protected by barriers to entry. Thirdly, a survey of EU-based exporting firms suggests that effective domestic competition within the Single Market (i) is an important driver of their global export competitiveness (in particular effective competition in upstream goods markets) and (ii) is for a majority of respondents not constraining their scale in a way which would prevent them from being successful on global export markets. Finally, relying on own estimates of markups for 117,000 firms from 23 EU Member States and a general equilibrium macroeconomic model, we estimate based on three simulation scenarios that more effective competition across markets in the EU would likely contribute significantly to more investment, employment, productivity and increase GDP by more than 2% and 4% after 5 and 10 years respectively.