University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
Doi
Abstract
My dissertation consists of three chapters on the economics of telecommunications. Chapter 1 studies how COVID-19 pandemic changed people's internet usage behavior by documenting both short-term and persistent changes in internet engagement using a novel panel of high-frequency household-level internet usage spanning 2020-2022. We find that Spring 2020 stay-at-home orders led to a dramatic increase in residential internet traffic, driven in part by the use of collaboration applications (e.g., Zoom), and other tools associated with access to the digital economy. We document changes in intertemporal usage patterns, time spent online, and bit rates across traffic categories. Finally, we compare behavioral changes in internet engagement by demographic segment, and discuss implications for broadband labels and the digital divide. Chapter 2 uses novel household-level data describing internet and TV usage, together with the timing of Kodi software adoption, to quantify damages from media piracy. We find that adoption does not harm paid over-the-top video providers. TV subscriptions decrease and internet-tier upgrades increase, resulting in a 1% reduction in payments to multiple-system operators (MSOs). MSO profits decrease if TV margins exceed 30%. These behavioral changes harm content providers reliant on MSOs for distribution via reduced licensing and advertising revenues. Chapter 3 develops a model of demand for mobile telecommunications with shared data allowances, and estimate it using individual-level plan and usage decisions. Using the model estimates we measure the biases in preference estimates that result from ignoring the strategic interaction between household members, and loss in consumer welfare due to over-consumption early in billing cycles.Doctor of Philosoph
