Estimation of time use and consumption by using policy change

2019 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 19K20878
• Project/Area Number (Other): 18H05676 (2018)
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund (2019); Single-year Grants (2018)
• Review Section: 0107:Economics, business administration, and related fields
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: MUROGA KIHO 東京大学, 大学院経済学研究科(経済学部), 特任研究員 (00828759)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-08-24 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: インターネット / 時間配分 / 労働供給

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The main question of this research is whether the internet has changed how we communicate or not. We examine the impact of internet penetration on time allocation, loneliness, participation in social activities, and marriage by exploiting exogenous regional variation of internet penetration in Japan. Our estimates show that internet penetration is associated with a substantial increase in leisure minutes, lonely minutes per day, especially lonely leisure minutes and lonely maintenance minutes. Overall the results show that the internet changed how we communicate, through increasing value of lonely leisure minute.
We next estimated effects of internet penetration on labor force participation, hours worked, employment status and wage. We found that internet penetration increases the probability of labor force participation. Our estimates also show that internet penetration is associated with a substantial increase in wage, especially for males.

Free Research Field

労働経済学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

テクノロジーの進歩とともに、我々の生活は様々な面で変化している。本研究では、インターネットの普及が我々の時間利用や就業状況に与える影響の分析を行なった。分析では、労働時間の減少・余暇時間の増加という側面が明らかになった。この結果は、テクノロジーの進歩によって我々の効用が増加したことを示唆している。