Thread by @EmmanouilTranos

📣New #Paper with @Tasos_Kitsos and @r_ortegaargiles hot🔥off the @RegionalStudies press: 'Digital economy in the UK: regional productivity effects of early adoption' doi.org/10.1080/003434… [1/n]

While we know a lot about the importance of #internet related technologies and digitisation practices to #economic performance and #productivity , we don't know much about the long-term effects of the early adoption of such technologies. [2/n]

This is understandable as the commercial #internet is c. only 25 years and relevant #data can be scarce especially at a disaggregated #Regional level. [3/n]

To overcome this issue, we use novel, #geolocated @internetarchive data about the volume of online content in the #UK #regions from 2000 to approximate the early and active engagement with digital economic activities. [4/n]

These are the amazing data 🙌👏from the @UKWebArchive . For more info webarchive.org.uk & data.webarchive.org.uk/opendata/ukwa.…. A related older blogpost: tinyurl.com/y37kh49s [5/n]

Using econometric techniques, we find significant positive and long-lasting effects of online content creation in 2000 on subsequent regional productivity levels up to 16 years later. [6/n]

Our data enables us to test the effect of #online content from different second level domain names: [7/n]

And before you say that the #web content is not that important today because of the #twitter, #instagram, #fb etc. try to remember how novel was having a webpage back in 2000! [8/n]

Our findings highlight the sizeable effects of the digital economy that policy-makers should consider when developing future rollout strategies. #5G anyone?? [9/n]

The paper is part of the @RegionalStudies special issue on 'Regional Approaches to data, environment, and society'. Massive thanks to the editors @CraigMDalton @burnsr77 & Jim Thatcher and the anonymous reviewers. [10/n]

Thanks also to @Facebook Research tinyurl.com/y7nlkxpw, the @turinginst and #BRIDGE for supporting our research [11/n]