Abstract In an effort to expand the use of telecommunications services by low-income Americans, the Federal Communications Commission's Lifeline program offers subsidies to qualifying low-income households. In recent years, the program has undergone significant reform to reduce the documented waste, fraud and abuse that accompanies many subsidy programs including Lifeline. The Commission has also questioned the efficiency of the program, if not the need for it, based on the argument that most Lifeline subscribers would obtain service without the subsidy. To quantify the displacement of regular paid accounts for subsidized Lifeline subscriptions, panel data and several empirical methods are used to quantify the relationship between the Lifeline and paid accounts. The analysis reveals no displacement effect, so Lifeline accounts are added to the total count of wireless subscriptions. A separating equilibrium, provided here, may explain these findings.

中文翻译：

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补贴与替代：生命线计划的实证研究

摘要 为了扩大低收入美国人对电信服务的使用，联邦通信委员会的生命线计划为符合条件的低收入家庭提供补贴。近年来，该计划进行了重大改革，以减少伴随包括 Lifeline 在内的许多补贴计划出现的记录浪费、欺诈和滥用行为。委员会还质疑该计划的效率，如果不是需要它的话，基于大多数 Lifeline 订户将在没有补贴的情况下获得服务的论点。为了量化定期付费账户对补贴生命线订阅的位移，面板数据和几种经验方法被用来量化生命线和付费账户之间的关系。分析表明没有位移效应，因此 Lifeline 帐户被添加到无线订阅总数中。此处提供的分离平衡可以解释这些发现。