TELECOMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT AND ECONOMIC-DEVELOPMENT

A two-way causal relationship between telecommunications infrastructure investment and economic development, established for the US economy in previous analysis, is tested at the more localized state and sub-state level and for two specific sub-categories of telecommunications infrastructure investment -central office equipment, and cable and wire. For time series of these two sub-categories of telecommunications investment complied for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and two countries within Pennsylvania this analysis tests two causal hypotheses consistent with the US national-level analysis: First, the level of economic activity at any point in time is a reliable predictor ('cause') of the amount of telecommunications investment at a later point in time. Second, the amount of telecommunications investment at any point in time is a reliable predictor ('cause') of the level of economic activity at a later point in time.