IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/indorg/v104y2026ics0167718725001067.html

State aid for broadband and crowding out of private investment: Evidence from the French market

Author

Listed:
  • Bourreau, Marc
  • Grzybowski, Lukasz
  • Muñoz-Acevedo, Ángela

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the potential crowding out of private investment by public subsidies in the deployment of broadband fiber networks. We estimate a model of fiber entry using a rich dataset on fiber deployment for more than 34,000 municipalities in mainland France from 2014 to 2019. We then assess whether private investment would have occurred in subsidized municipalities in the absence of state aid. We find that in 36 % of cases, public subsidies were allocated to municipalities where private entry would have occurred within three years. We estimate that about 902 million euros of the total 2203 million euros in total subsidies disbursed by the end of 2019 may have crowded out private investment. However, we also show that the French broadband plan accelerated fiber coverage in subsidized municipalities in the early stages of deployment.

Suggested Citation

  • Bourreau, Marc & Grzybowski, Lukasz & Muñoz-Acevedo, Ángela, 2026. "State aid for broadband and crowding out of private investment: Evidence from the French market," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:indorg:v:104:y:2026:i:c:s0167718725001067
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ijindorg.2025.103240
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167718725001067
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ijindorg.2025.103240?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
    • L1 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance
    • L4 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies
    • L33 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Comparison of Public and Private Enterprise and Nonprofit Institutions; Privatization; Contracting Out
    • L96 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Telecommunications
    • H44 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Publicly Provided Goods: Mixed Markets

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:indorg:v:104:y:2026:i:c:s0167718725001067. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505551 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.