Speaker
Description
How does mobile coverage affect the trajectories of structural labor market de-
velopment? This study investigates the expansion of early mobile connections em-
ploying IPUMS International harmonized census data at the sub-national level.
Starting from a global sample the study focuses on a set of 20 developing countries
following 7020 sub-national units appearing two times in the period 1990-2015 us-
ing 48.381.561 individual observations. The baseline OLS specification in the whole
sample points towards a net zero effect on labor market participation and a realloca-
tion of workers from manufacturing and services to agriculture. To tackle potential
endogeneity concerns, we employ NASA GHRC lightning strikes data as an instru-
mental variable to predict mobile connection presence. Our findings, based on 2SLS
estimation, reveal that a 1 percent increase in the population-weighted share of
GSM mobile connections in the sub-national region yields a statistically significant
positive effect on the probability of being employed in agriculture and a negative
one on being employed in industry and services. This result, confirming the OLS
findings, suggests a nuanced narrative of economic restructuring driven by task and
occupation-based dynamics following the advent of 2G technology.
