Exploring new Internet measurements on international trade and global human resources

Abstract

Purpose

We address the question of how the Internet promotes international trade volume, and especially, whether the global human resources affect the bilateral international trade during the technology development across countries.

Design/methodology/approach

A dynamic panel causality analysis is carried out to demonstrate empirically that the causality of the Internet diffusion on the international trade volumes. Evidence shows a significant positive effect of the Internet on international trade volume from time-series and cross-sectional regressions. Furthermore, the magnitude of elasticity is discussed.

Findings

There is strong evidence that the Internet stimulates international trade for all countries. Growth of trade volumes changes over time with heteroscedastic responses. The positive impacts of the growth of GDP are diluted by the growth of global human resources.

Originality/value

The data on the number of web hosts is not necessarily correlated to where the site is actually located. We contribute to the new Internet measurement which helps to explain the information transferring that stimulates the international trade and examine the global human resources.

Citation

Swan, T.T., Swan, B.Q. and Zhang, Z.(J). (2021), "Exploring new Internet measurements on international trade and global human resources", Journal of Economic Studies, Vol. 48 No. 2, pp. 428-448. https://doi.org/10.1108/JES-07-2019-0331