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Welcome to the WSIS Lab powered by WSIS Stocktaking. This is a collaborative space aimed at sharing research relevant to the Information Society development. As of today WSIS Lab focuses on collecting research results related to the economic impact of broadband.
All visitors are invited to share with the WSIS Lab their research results, publications, analytical reports, that prove direct impact of broadband. The visitors are invited to post information using blog or sharing it with the team of the WSIS Lab via mail at wsis-stocktaking@itu.int.
Please note that submitted information will be reflected in the document on Economic Impact of Broadband: Global Review of Evidence.
By Adriaan van Zon and Evans Mupela
In this paper we show the benefits of regional connectivity and specialization to growth. Starting with one region we show how welfare measured by utility per head increases as the number of connected regions increase.
We assume a common connectivity infrastructure implemented by satellite, through which the 'Great Connector' (GC) is able to add new regions to the pool of connected regions by taking a tax form those already connected. We find that increasing production costs leads to faster transitions towards the steady state whereas increasing transportation and communication costs tends to lengthen the transition.
The results point to reductions in transportation and communication costs in particular as a suitable vehicle to speed up growth. The results also show a strong positive effect of reductions in the cost of making new connections. This has a significant impact on both the steady state growth rate and on transitional growth, while significantly reducing the transition period.
The paper can be downloaded from:
www.merit.unu.edu/publications/wppdf/2010/wp2010-001.pdf
