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Full-Text Articles in Econometrics
Evaluating The Impact Of The American Recovery And Reinvestment Act’S Btop Program On Broadband Adoption, James Prieger, Janice A. Hauge
Evaluating The Impact Of The American Recovery And Reinvestment Act’S Btop Program On Broadband Adoption, James Prieger, Janice A. Hauge
School of Public Policy Working Papers
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) spent $4.7B during 2009-2013 to, int. al, increase broadband adoption in underserved communities. We characterize the BTOP grants and examine the impact of the awards on broadband adoption. Econometric specifications controlling for award endogeneity related to observed and unobserved county-level factors find that spending is apparently associated with increased broadband adoption. Further investigation, however, reveals that the impacts of spending are nonlinear and even nonmonotonic over the range of county-level BTOP spending in the data. Controlling for trends to reduce the potential for spurious correlation between spending and outcomes …