How do telecommunications reforms affect labour market arrangements? Evidence from Central and Western Europe

This paper exploits variations in the timing of telecommunications reforms across Europe to investigate the relationship between the rise of alternative work arrangements and the emergence of the Internet. We evaluate whether sectors that are technologically more dependent on information and communication technologies (ICT) experienced disproportionately larger changes in their employment outcomes after telecommunications reforms were introduced. Our main results point to a disproportionate increase in total employment, part-time work and home-based work among ICT-dependent sectors after the implementation of telecommunications reforms. These results suggest that telecommunications reforms affected labour market arrangements by fostering the adoption of ICT. The results are robust to several specifications.