We investigate the impact of early internet availability at basic speeds on local economic development in remote areas of developing countries by analyzing nighttime light emissions across towns in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we exploit submarine cable arrivals, which established countrywide internet connections, and the rollout of the national backbones, which defines internet access within countries. Estimating on incidentally connected mid-sized towns, we find that early internet availability increases nighttime light intensity by 10 percent. We consider increased employment as the main explanation. Our findings highlight the importance of closing the digital divide for regional development.
Job training is widely regarded as crucial for protecting workers from automation, yet there is a lack of empirical evidence to support this belief. Using internationally harmonized data from over 90,000 workers across 37 industrialized countries, we construct an individual-level measure of automation risk based on tasks performed at work. Our analysis reveals substantial within-occupation variation in automation risk, overlooked by existing occupation-level measures. To assess whether job training mitigates automation risk, we exploit within-occupation and within-industry variation. Additionally, we employ entropy balancing to re-weight workers without job training based on a rich set of background characteristics, including tested numeracy skills as a proxy for unobserved ability. We find that job training reduces workers’ automation risk by 4.7 percentage points, equivalent to 10 percent of the average automation risk. The training-induced reduction in automation risk accounts for one-fifth of the wage returns to job training. Job training is effective in reducing automation risk and increasing wages across nearly all countries, underscoring the external validity of our findings. Women tend to benefit more from training than men, with the advantage becoming particularly pronounced at older ages.
We investigate how reducing information costs due to forced experimentation with postal voting affects voting behavior. Leveraging a natural experiment during the Bavarian 2020 Mayoral Elections, we employ an event study design. We find a transitory increase in total turnout and a persistent substitution from in-person to postal voting. Notably, municipalities with a higher turnout in the past show a larger effect. Investigating the distribution of the information costs shows an age gradient with the highest information costs for the oldest age group. The conservative governing party (CSU) gains persistently from higher postal turnout and other conservative parties’ in-person voters.
Commuting is a fundamental aspect of employees’ daily routines, yet its effects on subjective well-being are insufficiently investigated in the context of evolving digital connectivity. This paper investigates the causal effects of changes in commuting distance on subjective well-being in an era of widespread mobile internet access. Exploiting exogenous shifts in commuting distance resulting from employer-driven workplace relocations, we employ a Difference-in-Differences framework using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) from 2010 to 2019. Our results show that an involuntary increase in commuting distance significantly reduces life satisfaction by 3 percent, on average, and heightens feelings of worry by almost 8 percent, on average, with adaptation occurring only partially over time. Investigating the role of increased mobile coverage during commutes, we find that it, at least partially, mitigates declines in life satisfaction, whereas it intensifies the negative impact on satisfaction with leisure.