In the shadows of silence: Wireless restrictions and long-term socioeconomic outcomes

We study the long-run consequences of exclusion from communication infrastructure using a unique historical natural experiment: the 1958 creation of the U.S. National Radio Quiet Zone (NRQZ), which has restricted wireless transmissions across parts of rural Appalachia for more than six decades. We implement a geographic regression discontinuity design at the NRQZ boundary, and interpret the estimated discontinuities as long-run equilibrium differences induced by a persistent restriction regime and subsequent location responses. Counties and tracts inside the NRQZ exhibit lower educational attainment and a thinner local institutional environment, with fewer libraries, civic and social organisations, and museums per capita. Differences in unemployment are evident in our baseline specifications but are not robust to restricting comparisons to common stretches of the boundary; differences in income are small throughout. County-level connectedness measures provide mixed evidence: the Penn State social-capital index indicates lower associational infrastructure inside the NRQZ, while broader network-based measures such as Economic Connectedness are less precisely estimated. Taken together, our findings suggest that infrastructure deprivation–distinct from the introduction of new digital technologies–can have lasting impacts on regional development trajectories, with important implications for broadband policy and rural service provision.