High-Speed Broadband Expansion in Rural Sweden : Effects on Population and Workplaces

Abstract: This paper examines the effect of high-speed broadband expansion on the rural population and number of rural workplaces in Sweden in the years 2009 and 2014. Previous studies conducted on the subject have found positive correlations between broadband expansion and economic growth. However, most previous studies have been focused on urban areas and the transition from no broadband to basic broadband. This study focuses on the shift from basic broadband to high-speed access in rural areas in all 290 municipalities of Sweden. This paper uses cross-sectional data to perform OLS regressions to test the effect that an expansion of high-speed broadband has on rural population and rural workplaces. An accessibility measure is constructed to control for different access that each municipality has to the rest of the population as well as to control for spatial dependencies. The results of this paper show that there is a significant correlation between high-speed broadband expansion and the number of rural workplaces.