{"id":48610,"date":"2023-01-01T01:00:18","date_gmt":"2023-01-01T06:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=48610"},"modified":"2022-12-31T09:45:10","modified_gmt":"2022-12-31T14:45:10","slug":"qotd-the-amazing-economic-impact-of-mobile-phones-in-the-developing-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/01\/01\/qotd-the-amazing-economic-impact-of-mobile-phones-in-the-developing-world\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The amazing economic impact of mobile phones in the developing world"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 25px 10px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>One of the interesting findings about mobile phones is that they grow the economy. In a country without a general landline network \u2013 ie, all the poor ones \u2013 10% of the population gaining a mobile increases GDP by 0.5%. No, not the growth rate goes up from 2% to 2.01%. But an additional 0.5% of GDP each year. Which is, by the standards of these things, pretty big.<\/p>\n<p>We also know why too. Being able to contact people means that markets complete, contracts and transactions are possible. It&#8217;s no longer necessary to near randomly meet someone physically in order to be able to organise a transaction. Thus more transactions happen \u2013 the value added in voluntary transactions being that GDP which is increasing.<\/p>\n<p>Tim Worstall, <a href=\"https:\/\/continentaltelegraph.com\/economy\/mobile-phones-cut-the-murder-rate-for-the-same-reason-they-grow-the-economy\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Mobile Phones Cut The Murder Rate &#8211; For the Same Reason They Grow The Economy&#8221;, <em>Continental Telegraph<\/em><\/a>, 2019-05-30.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the interesting findings about mobile phones is that they grow the economy. In a country without a general landline network \u2013 ie, all the poor ones \u2013 10% of the population gaining a mobile increases GDP by 0.5%. No, not the growth rate goes up from 2% to 2.01%. But an additional 0.5% [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[362,21,25,41,15],"tags":[1094,91,547],"class_list":["post-48610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-asia","category-economics","category-quotations","category-technology","tag-gdp","tag-poverty","tag-smartphones"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-cE2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48610"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79030,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48610\/revisions\/79030"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}