Economywide and Sectoral Impacts on Workers of Brazil’s Internet Rollout

Dutz, Mark A. ; Ferreira Mation, Lucas ; O'Connell, Stephen D. ; Willig, Robert D.

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: INTERNET;    TECHNOLOGY;    LABOR DEMAND;    WAGE INEQUALITY;    EMPLOYMENT;   

RP-ID  :  WPS8042

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper is a study of the effect ofBrazil's staggered Internet rollout between 2000 and2014 on municipality employment and wages. The study uses anew, annual data set on Internet availability from theBrazil school census, with the assumption that the share ofschools that have Internet access in each municipalityreflects the general accessibility of Internet connections.These data are combined with Brazil's rich, matchedemployer-employee survey, which contains annual occupationand wage earnings information for all formally-employedworkers in Brazil across all sectors, including primary,secondary, and tertiary industry groups. Contemporaneous andlagged effects are considered. The analysis finds thatincreased Internet access has no statistically significantnet effect on aggregate employment, and has a negativeeffect on average wages, with a reduction in measures ofwage dispersion. Brazil’s Internet rollout results inemployment shifts from sectors with more limited expansionopportunities (wholesale and retail trade, publicadministration, and largely publicly-owned utilities, whichjointly comprise almost half of the formal workforce in2010) to sectors with more output expansion opportunities.The employment effects are positive and most pronounced inthe manufacturing, transport and storage, finance andinsurance, and hospitality industry groups. In themanufacturing sector, Internet access induces positiveemployment and wage effects in medium- and high-skill occupations.