Valentin Lindlacher

Digital Infrastructure and Local Economic Growth: Early Internet in Sub-Saharan Africa

with Moritz Goldbeck
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Digital infrastructure enables widespread access to modern information and communication technologies—most prominently the Internet—promising to stimulate economic growth. We analyze Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries in the early 2000s and ask if even very basic Internet availability contributes to regional economic development. We measure the evolution of SSA cities using nighttime light data and exploit quasi-random variation in Internet availability induced by sub-marine cable arrivals in a difference-in-differences setting. We find that availability of basic Internet leads to three percentage points higher economic growth of SSA cities in the years after connection compared to similar cities not (yet) connected.

Keywords: Internet; regional/urban development; cities; nighttime light
JEL-Codes: L86, O18, O33, R11

New region, new chances: Does moving regionally for university shape later job mobility?

with Felix Ehrenfried (under review)
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Efficient local labour markets feature welfare and higher wages. For this efficiency, regional mobility is an essential factor. We find that high school graduates who move to another labour market region (LMR) when enrolling at a university, are also more likely to move to a third LMR when entering the job market. We take a subset of university graduates who went to high school in an agglomeration's suburbs. To take endogeneity in the decision to move into account, we use distance to university as an instrument. Experiencing a change in the residential region is a chance to induce regional mobility.

Keywords: regional mobility; job mobility; distance to university; students; spatial
JEL-Codes: J61, R23, I23