Does the internet generate economic growth, international trade, or both?

Huub Meijers

International Economics and Economic Policy, 2014, vol. 11, issue 1, 137-163

Abstract: Recent cross country panel data studies find a positive impact of internet use on economic growth and a positive impact of internet use on trade. The present study challenges the first finding by showing that internet use does not explain economic growth directly in a fully specified growth model. In particular openness to international trade variables seem to be highly correlated with internet use and the findings in the literature that internet use causes trade is confirmed here suggesting that internet use impacts trade and that trade impacts economic growth. A simultaneous equations model confirms the positive and significant role of internet use to openness and the importance of openness to economic growth. Internet use shows to be more impacting trade in non-high income countries than in high income countries whereas the impact of trade on economic growth is the same for both income groups. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014

Keywords: Economic growth; Internet; Trade; Panel; C23; L86; F10; O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (48)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10368-013-0251-x (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:iecepo:v:11:y:2014:i:1:p:137-163

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10368/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10368-013-0251-x

Access Statistics for this article

International Economics and Economic Policy is currently edited by Paul J.J. Welfens, Holger C. Wolf, Christian Pierdzioch and Christian Richter

More articles in International Economics and Economic Policy from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla (sonal.shukla@springer.com) and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (indexing@springernature.com).