Do Digital Information Technologies Help Unemployed Job Seekers Find a Job? Evidence from the Broadband Internet Expansion in Germany
Nicole Gürtzgen, André Diegmann, Laura Pohlan, Gerard J. van den Berg
European Economic Review,
February
2021
Abstract
This paper studies effects of the introduction of a new digital mass medium on reemployment of unemployed job seekers. We combine data on broadband internet availability at the local level with German individual register data. We address endogeneity by exploiting technological peculiarities that affected the roll-out of broadband internet. Results show that broadband internet improves reemployment rates after the first months in unemployment for males. Complementary analyses with survey data suggest that internet access mainly changes male job seekers’ search behavior by increasing online search and the number of job applications.
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Do Digital Information Technologies Help Unemployed Job Seekers Find a Job? Evidence from the Broadband Internet Expansion in Germany
Nicole Gürtzgen, André Diegmann, Laura Pohlan, Gerard J. van den Berg
Abstract
This paper studies effects of the introduction of a new digital mass medium on reemployment of unemployed job seekers. We combine data on high-speed (broadband) internet availability at the local level with German individual register data. We address endogeneity by exploiting technological peculiarities that affected the roll-out of high-speed internet. The results show that high-speed internet improves reemployment rates after the first months in unemployment. This is confirmed by complementary analyses with individual survey data suggesting that internet access increases online job search and the number of job interviews after a few months in unemployment.
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A Control Group Study of Incubators’ Impact to Promote Firm Survival
Michael Schwartz
Journal of Technology Transfer,
Nr. 3,
2013
Abstract
It is widely unclear as to whether start-up firms supported by publicly-initiated incubator initiatives have higher survival rates than comparable start-up firms that have not received support by such initiatives. This paper contributes to the underlying discussion by performing a large-scale matched-pairs analysis of the long-term survival of 371 incubator firms (after their graduation) from five German incubators and a control group of 371 comparable non-incubated firms. The analysis covers a 10-year time span. To account for the problem of selection bias, a non-parametric matching approach is applied to identify an appropriate control group. For neither of the five incubator locations, we find statistically significant higher survival probabilities for firms located in incubators compared to firms located outside those incubator organizations. For three incubator locations the analysis reveals statistically significant lower chances of survival for those start-ups receiving support by an incubator. The empirical results, therefore, raise some doubts regarding the impacts of incubation on long-term firm survival.
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