• Graduate Program
  • Research
  • Browse our Courses
  • Events
    • Events Calendar
    • Events Archive
    • Tinbergen Institute Lectures
    • Summer School
      • Deep Learning
      • Economics of Blockchain and Digital Currencies
      • Foundations of Machine Learning with Applications in Python
      • Marketing Research with Purpose
      • Modern Toolbox for Spatial and Functional Data
      • Sustainable Finance
      • Tuition Fees and Payment
      • Tinbergen Institute Summer School Program
    • Annual Tinbergen Institute Conference archive
  • News
  • Summer School
    • Deep Learning
    • Economics of Blockchain and Digital Currencies
    • Foundations of Machine Learning with Applications in Python
    • Marketing Research with Purpose
    • Modern Toolbox for Spatial and Functional Data
    • Sustainable Finance
  • Alumni

Blauw, S. and Franses, P.H. (2016). Off the Hook: Measuring the Impact of Mobile Telephone Use on Economic Development of Household in Uganda using Copulas Journal of Development Studies, 52(3):315--330.


  • Journal
    Journal of Development Studies

It is now widely understood that mobile phone use has beneficial effects on development in developing countries, but little is known about the effects at the household level. We examine the impact of mobile telephone use on household income using a unique cross-sectional data set from Uganda. We use a novel econometric technique to handle endogeneity, which models the correlation between the endogenous regressor and the error term with copulas. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that the copula method has been applied in the economic development literature. We find a positive impact of mobile phone use on income.