Michael Kotrous

This paper studies the causal effect of municipal broadband provision on local labor market outcomes using the introduction of a publicly owned fiber-to-the-home broadband network in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Municipal broadband networks are frequently justified as tools for economic development, yet credible evidence on their labor market impacts remains limited. I evaluate this policy using a synthetic control design that constructs a counterfactual Chattanooga from a weighted combination of comparable metropolitan statistical areas in the Southern United States that were not exposed to municipal broadband projects or public-private partnerships. The analysis focuses on the employment rate measured using the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), covering the period 1991-2017. While Chattanooga’s employment rate increased following the rollout of residential broadband service in 2009, placebo tests and permutation-based inference indicate that these gains are not statistically distinguishable from post-Great Recession employment growth observed in comparable cities. Overall, the results provide no evidence that Chattanooga’s municipal broadband network had a significant effect on aggregate local employment. These findings contribute to the literature on broadband policy and economic development and offer cautionary guidance for policymakers considering large public investments in government-owned broadband infrastructure.

Broadband deployment policies have directly subsidized fiber providers because fiber broadband delivers fast download speeds. This article examines whether recent fiber buildout has increased competition for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Lines (aDSL) and cable incumbents and whether entry by a fiber competitor predicts faster incumbent download speeds. Despite significant growth in fiber broadband service in the United States between 2014 and 2019, the number of fiber competitors in census blocks with aDSL or cable incumbents remains low. Further, our econometric results, while not interpretable as causal relationships, suggest that the entry of a rival fiber operator does not explain recent increases in cable and aDSL speeds.