A natural experiment, unintentionally conducted by the price subsidy program Lifeline Assistance, underpins our innovative strategy to estimate consumer demand for communications services. Using a national household panel containing demographic and billing information, we estimate own and...

This paper makes use of a natural experiment performed by a low-income price subsidy program, Lifeline Assistance, to estimate consumer substitution between fixed and mobile service. Variability across states and time in the Lifeline discount and the program’s eligibility requirements aids in...