IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mtu/wpaper/19_23.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Ultra-fast broadband, skill complementarities, gender and wages

Author

Listed:
  • Richard Fabling

    (Independent researcher)

  • Arthur Grimes

    (Motu Economic and Public Policy Research)

Abstract

We examine whether ultra-fast broadband (UFB) has selective complementarities with certain types of labour. Using longitudinal data on New Zealand firms’ internet connection type (UFB versus other forms of broadband) we find that, following UFB adoption by a firm, the wages of certain skilled incumbent employees rise. This is particularly so for males with STEM qualifications, plus males with university level qualifications (and possibly Masters level female graduates) without STEM qualifications. Wages of male employees without qualifications and of female employees with both lower level and no qualifications tend to fall relative to those in firms that do not adopt UFB. These results are consistent with the existence of skill-biased technical change. More puzzling is why these skill-biased changes have differential effects for incumbent male versus female workers.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard Fabling & Arthur Grimes, 2019. "Ultra-fast broadband, skill complementarities, gender and wages," Working Papers 19_23, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:mtu:wpaper:19_23
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://motu-www.motu.org.nz/wpapers/19_23.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Avi Goldfarb & Catherine Tucker, 2019. "Digital Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 57(1), pages 3-43, March.
    2. Anders Akerman & Ingvil Gaarder & Magne Mogstad, 2015. "The Skill Complementarity of Broadband Internet," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 130(4), pages 1781-1824.
    3. Georg Graetz & Guy Michaels, 2018. "Robots at Work," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 100(5), pages 753-768, December.
    4. Isabelle Sin & Steven Stillman & Richard Fabling, 2017. "What drives the gender wage gap? Examining the roles of sorting, productivity differences, and discrimination," Working Papers 17_15, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    5. Arthur Grimes & Cleo Ren & Philip Stevens, 2012. "The need for speed: impacts of internet connectivity on firm productivity," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 187-201, April.
    6. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2017. "The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(3), pages 789-865, September.
    7. David H. Autor & Frank Levy & Richard J. Murnane, 2003. "The skill content of recent technological change: an empirical exploration," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Nov.
    8. Grimes, Arthur & Townsend, Wilbur, 2018. "Effects of (ultra-fast) fibre broadband on student achievement," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 8-15.
    9. Fabling, Richard & Grimes, Arthur, 2021. "Picking up speed: Does ultrafast broadband increase firm productivity?," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).
    10. Maarten Goos, 2018. "The impact of technological progress on labour markets: policy challenges," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 34(3), pages 362-375.
    11. Richard Fabling & Lynda Sanderson, 2016. "A Rough Guide to New Zealand's Longitudinal Business Database (2nd edition)," Working Papers 16_03, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    12. Richard Fabling & Arthur Grimes & David C. Maré, 2012. "Performance Pay Systems and the Gender Wage Gap," Working Papers 12_13, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    13. Bertschek Irene & Briglauer Wolfgang & Hüschelrath Kai & Kauf Benedikt & Niebel Thomas, 2015. "The Economic Impacts of Broadband Internet: A Survey," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 14(4), pages 201-227, December.
    14. Richard Fabling & David C Maré, 2015. "Addressing the absence of hours information in linked employer-employee data," Working Papers 15_17, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    15. Richard Fabling, 2009. "A Rough Guide to New Zealand's Longitudinal Business Database," Global COE Hi-Stat Discussion Paper Series gd09-103, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    16. Richard Fabling, 2011. "Keeping it Together: Tracking Firms on New Zealand’s Longitudinal Business Database," Working Papers 11_01, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fabling, Richard & Grimes, Arthur, 2021. "Picking up speed: Does ultrafast broadband increase firm productivity?," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).
    2. Lynda Sanderson & Garrick Wright-McNaughton & Naomitsu Yashiro, 2022. "Does high-speed internet boost exporting?," Working Papers 2022/02, New Zealand Productivity Commission.
    3. Nathan Chappell & Adam Jaffe, 2018. "Intangible Investment and Firm Performance," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 52(4), pages 509-559, June.
    4. Abrardi, Laura & Cambini, Carlo, 2019. "Ultra-fast broadband investment and adoption: A survey," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 183-198.
    5. Richard Fabling, 2021. "Living on the edge: An anatomy of New Zealand’s most productive firms," Working Papers 21_01, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    6. Thor Berger & Carl Benedikt Frey, 2016. "Structural Transformation in the OECD: Digitalisation, Deindustrialisation and the Future of Work," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 193, OECD Publishing.
    7. Anderton, Robert & Jarvis, Valerie & Labhard, Vincent & Morgan, Julian & Petroulakis, Filippos & Vivian, Lara, 2020. "Virtually everywhere? Digitalisation and the euro area and EU economies," Occasional Paper Series 244, European Central Bank.
    8. Timothy DeStefano & Richard Kneller & Jonathan Timmis, 2023. "The (fuzzy) digital divide: the effect of universal broadband on firm performance," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 23(1), pages 139-177.
    9. Cariolle, Joël, 2021. "International connectivity and the digital divide in Sub-Saharan Africa," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    10. Anil Rupasingha & John Pender & Ryan Williams, 2024. "Broadband and rural development: Impacts of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Broadband Initiatives Program on saving and creating jobs," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 62(2), pages 698-721, April.
    11. Adam Jaffe & Nathan Chappell, 2018. "Worker flows, entry, and productivity in New Zealand’s construction industry," Working Papers 18_02, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    12. Corey Allan & David C Maré, 2021. "Do workers share in firm success? Pass-through estimates for New Zealand," Working Papers 21_15, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    13. Briglauer, Wolfgang & Stocker, Volker, 2020. "Bedeutung digitaler Infrastrukturen und Dienste und Maßnahmen zur Förderung der Resilienz in Krisenzeiten," Policy Notes 42, EcoAustria – Institute for Economic Research.
    14. Cortes, Guido Matias & Lerche, Adrian & Schönberg, Uta & Tschopp, Jeanne, 2023. "Technological Change, Firm Heterogeneity and Wage Inequality," IZA Discussion Papers 16070, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Ping Chen & Jiawei Gao & Zheng Ji & Han Liang & Yu Peng, 2022. "Do Artificial Intelligence Applications Affect Carbon Emission Performance?—Evidence from Panel Data Analysis of Chinese Cities," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(15), pages 1-16, August.
    16. Richard Fabling & Lynda Sanderson, 2016. "A Rough Guide to New Zealand's Longitudinal Business Database (2nd edition)," Working Papers 16_03, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    17. Zuazu-Bermejo, Izaskun, 2022. "Robots and women in manufacturing employment," ifso working paper series 19, University of Duisburg-Essen, Institute for Socioeconomics (ifso).
    18. David C. Maré & Dean R. Hyslop & Richard Fabling, 2017. "Firm productivity growth and skill," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(3), pages 302-326, September.
    19. Lynn Riggs & Livvy Mitchell, 2021. "Predicted Distributional Impacts of Climate Change Policy on Employment," Working Papers 21_07, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    20. Lynn Riggs & Isabelle Sin & Dean Hyslop, 2019. "Measuring the “gig” economy: Challenges and options," Working Papers 19_18, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Broadband; ultra-fast; wages; skill-biased technical change; gender wage gap;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
    • H54 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Infrastructures
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:mtu:wpaper:19_23. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Maxine Watene (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/motuenz.html .

    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.