Ricerc@Sapienza

Information and communication technologies play a crucial role in the evolution of societies, transformation of industries and economic development. Growing demand for new products and services that require an increasing transmission bandwidth reinforce the view of Internet connection and next-generation networks as general-purpose technologies. Building upon a growth model with endogenous spillovers, the present chapter explores the impact on economic growth exerted by the diffusion of broadband connections in two different samples drawn from the OECD countries.

We study how the diffusion of broadband Internet affects social capital using two data
sets from the UK. Our empirical strategy exploits the fact that broadband access has long
depended on customers’ position in the voice telecommunication infrastructure that was
designed in the 1930s. The actual speed of an Internet connection, in fact, rapidly decays
with the distance of the dwelling from the specific node of the network serving its area.
Merging unique information about the topology of the voice network with geocoded

We test the relationship between the use of social networking sites (SNS) and a proxy of utility, i.e. subjective well-being (SWB), using instrumental variables. Additionally, we disentangle the indirect effects of SNS on well-being mediated by face-to-face interactions and social trust using a structural equation model. Results suggest that the use of SNS hampers people’s well-being directly and indirectly, through its negative effects on social trust. However, the use of SNS also has a positive impact on well-being because it increases the probability of face-to-face interactions.