Author Description

This volume was prepared by Constantin Mang while he was working at the Ifo Institute. It was completed in 2014 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It includes a short introduction and four self-contained chapters that focus on ICT innovations in different markets. Chapter 1gives a short introduction into the topic and lays out some general aspects about the methodological frameworks used in this volume. Chapter 2 is focused on the effects of broadband Internet on the housing market in order to quantify the value of broadband access in terms of a premium on housing rents. Methodologically, the chapter uses micro data from Germany's largest online platform for real estate advertisements and estimates a hedonic model with rent prices. Chapter 3 investigates the association of online job search and matching quality using individual-level data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). It measures matching quality by the respondent's evaluation of his new job compared to his former job. The results show that job changers who found their new job online are better matched than their counterparts who found their new job through traditional channels. Chapter 4 provides evidence on the effectiveness of PC use in schools across countries. Using data from the international student achievement test TIMSS, it estimate the effect of PC use on student test scores and finds that using a PC for some activities has positive effects on student achievement, whereas using a PC for other activities has negative effects. Chapter 5 investigates the effects of a mobile Internet infrastructure upgrade on the take-up of location-based online services. Using data from the largest German online platform for restaurant reviews, it finds that upgrading the mobile Internet infrastructure increases the number of restaurant reviews and the share of reviews written on smartphones.