Broadband Adoption and Firm Productivity: Evidence from Irish Manufacturing Firms

We estimate the effects of adopting DSL broadband on firm productivity and productivity growth allowing for differing broadband speeds. We use a two-stage least squares estimator with geographical broadband availability as an instrument to address some potential endogeneity problems in a panel of Irish manufacturing firms. While more productive firms are on average more likely to be using DSL broadband, we find no statistically signicant effect of broadband adoption on firms' productivity (growth).