The impact of information and communications technologies (ICTS) on firm location

Recent innovations in information and communications technologies (ICTs), particularly those related to the Internet, have fundamentally changed the environment in which businesses and regions compete around the globe. Despite widespread recognition of this change, several aspects of the manner in which ICTs have impacted business location and regional development remain unexplored. The papers that comprise this dissertation seek to provide some initial quantitative insights about ICTs, firm location, and regional development, to a literature that remains largely theoretical and speculative. The first paper explores the utility of short and mid-range broadband forecasts as potential tools for local economic development officials to flag problematic areas where broadband provision via traditional market mechanisms is doubtful. The piece finds short and mid-range spatial forecasts of broadband provision offer improved results over aspatial forecasts, which is especially important for ICT studies, given the historical lack of available data for use in empirical work. Forecasts can also be used by economic development officials to craft proactive rather than reactive intervention strategies to rollout broadband in unserved areas. The second paper examines similarities in the spatial distribution of broadband provision and firms in a variety of industries. Results indicate the relationship between the location of broadband and the location of firms varies by firm size and industry. This suggests firm size and industry membership are critical considerations when evaluating the impact of ICTs on firm location decisions. The third and final paper examines the challenges associated with benchmarking regional development given the pervasive and related technological and industrial changes in the U.S over the past thirty years. Findings suggest multivariate approaches for benchmarking regional development are preferred over univariate approaches given the demonstrated divergence in univariate indicators in recent years. In sum, these three studies provide important information regarding the measurement of regional competitiveness in the global information economy, as well as information about the spatial relationship between firm location and broadband provision; which is likely to be a critical locational consideration for firm in specific sectors of the U.S economy.