Policy by the Numbers: 2014

International Broadband Pricing Study: Updated Dataset

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Fei Xue is a Staff Analyst at GoogleFor the last couple years, Google has worked with Communications Chambers to produce a dataset of retail broadband Internet service prices. We released the first dataset in August 2012 and updated it again in May 2013. This dataset enables international comparisons over time and can potentially be used to evaluate the efficacy of particular public policies on consumer prices.Today, we’re happy to announce the 3rd edition of this dataset. This release expanded the coverage with improved quality: up to ~3000 mobile plans and 1800+ fixed from major ISPs over ~100 countries.

Price observations for fixed broadband plans can be found here.

Mobile broadband prices can be found here.

Explanatory notes here and ancillary data is here.

We received a lot of positive feedback after the first two releases, and we hope this dataset is useful for regulators, policy makers, academics and advocates in making informed, data-driven decisions.

Study Highlights: "High Tech Employment in the European Union"

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Joep Konings is a professor of economics at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Leuven, Belgium.In "High Tech Employment in the European Union," a new report by Ian Hathaway (Engine Advocacy) in collaboration with Maarten Goos and me, Joep Konings, (KU Leuven), we analyze* two datasets of worker-level labor market data in the European Union in order to explore the impact of high-tech employment across the EU economy. Our findings show that the high-tech supports economic growth in the EU, creating benefits across the economy. More importantly, the creation of one high-tech job in a local economy creates more than four additional non-high tech jobs in the same region. This includes workers of a variety of occupations, including lawyers, physicians, wait staff, taxi drivers, and school teachers.Our data also tell us that high-tech workers are a critical component of the European workforce. We found that in 2011, the 22 million high-tech workers employed in the EU-27 represented 10 percent of total employment. At 13.7 percent of total employment, Czech Republic had the highest concentration. Finland, Sweden, Denmark, France, and eight additional countries had high-tech employment shares above 10 percent of total employment.The January 29 launch event, hosted by Bruegel, provided an important platform for a policy debate on the issue of employment, which recognized the contribution of high-tech employment to the European economy. The policy discussion focused on the fact that while technology outmodes some jobs, it also significantly increases productivity, and creates new and better jobs as well as new ways of working. We saw vibrant discussion about empowering people to acquire the right skills and approach learning as a lifelong endeavor to remain valuable employees in the new tech-driven economy.

*Methodology is outlined in the appendix on page 21.

Policy by the Numbers

International Broadband Pricing Study: Updated Dataset

Study Highlights: "High Tech Employment in the European Union"

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