Christopher Alex Hooton

Testing the economics of the net neutrality debate

This paper examines the impacts of net neutrality rule changes in the United States in 2010, 2015, and 2017 on telecommunication industry investment levels. The paper tackles the issue with a comprehensive dataset with full time series coverage for all SEC-registered telecommunications firms from 2009 to 2018. The author tracks new capital expenditures incurred, which reflects new investment decisions made rather than old investment decisions materialized, with quarterly data and exact issuance dates.