Research Seminar: "Home Broadband and Human Capital Formation" with José Montalbán (SOFI, Stockholm U)

• Wed, March 17th, 2021, 13:00 h. Webinar!!!
• Speaker: José Montalbán Castilla (SOFI, Stockholm U)
• Title: Home Broadband and Human Capital Formation  
• Invited by: Carmelo Rodríguez-Álvarez (ICAE-UCM)

Abstract: This paper estimates the effect of home high-speed internet on national test scores of students at age 14. We combine comprehensive information on the telecom network, administrative student records, house prices and local amenities in England in a fuzzy spatial regression discontinuity design across invisible telephone exchange catchment areas. Using this strategy, we find that increasing broadband speed by 1 Mbit/s increases test scores by 1.37 percentile ranks in the years 2005-2008. This effect is sizeable, equivalent to 5% of a standard deviation in the national score distribution, and not driven by other technological mediating factors or school characteristics.

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