Disaggregating the Impact of the Internet on International Trade

Osnago, Alberto; Tan, Shawn W.

doi:10.1596/1813-9450-7785

Cited by 27 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 10 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Along the same lines, Tay (2015) has found a strong and positive effect of the Internet on trade in educational services. In line with previously highlighted studies, Osnago and Tan (2016) have observed that the Internet adoption influences positively international trade, although bilateral exports are more affected when Internet adoption increases in the exporting country than the importing country. Abeliansky and Hilbert (2017) have investigated the differential effects of telecommunication quantity (data subscriptions per capita) and quality (bandwidth data speed per subscription) of fixed and mobile telephony and internet services on countries' bilateral goods exports.…”

Section: Theoretical Motivation: Effect Of the Internet On Tax Revenusupporting

confidence: 90%

Internet, Participation in International Trade and Tax Revenue Instability

Gnangnon¹

2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper investigates the effect of the Internet on tax revenue instability, notably through the international trade channel. It has used a sample of 142 countries over the period 1995-2017, and relied primarily on the two-step system Generalized Methods of Moments (GMM) estimators (but also incidentally on the Error Component Two-Stage Least Squares estimator). Tax revenue instability is primarily measured by the instability of non-resource tax revenue, but also by the instability of total tax revenue (for robustness check). The findings indicate that the Internet exerts a negative effect on tax revenue instability. Interestingly, this effect genuinely translates through the international trade channel, regardless of the measure of tax revenue instability considered. Countries enjoy a higher negative effect of the Internet on tax revenue instability as they enjoy a greater participation in international trade. These findings, therefore, add to the potential benefits of the Internet adoption (e.g., strengthening countries' participation in international trade, enhance their tax revenue performance and promote tax reform, including in developing countries) by showing that it could also help to stabilize tax revenue, particularly through the degree of countries' participation in international trade.

show abstract

Section: Theoretical Motivation: Effect Of the Internet On Tax Revenusupporting

confidence: 90%

Internet, Participation in International Trade and Tax Revenue Instability

Gnangnon¹

2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This is in line with empirical studies that have shown that access to the internet improves export performance in developing countries across manufacturing and services sectors through reduced search costs and decreased distance barriers (Clarke, 2008, Freund andWeinhold, 2004;Hortaçsu et al, 2009;Ahn et al, 2011;and Lendle et al, 2016). Further the internet has also been shown to increase firm productivity, especially of smaller and less innovative firms (Clarke and Wallsten, 2006;Lin, 2015;Osnago and Tan, 2016;Paunov and Rollo, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 82%

E-commerce and Developing Country-SME Participation in Global Value Chains

Lanz¹,

Lundquist²,

Mansio³

et al. 2018

WTO Working Papers

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Two far-reaching developments have increased the trade opportunities for SMEs in developing countries. Firstly, the rise of the internet and advances in ICT have reduced trade-related information and communication costs. Secondly, the international fragmentation of production has increased the opportunities for SMEs to specialize in narrow activities at various stages along the production chain. Using firm-level data from the World Bank's Enterprise Survey, we test whether digital connectivity, as captured by whether a firm has a website or not, facilitates the participation of manufacturing SMEs from developing countries in global value chains (GVCs). We find robust evidence that digital connectivity facilitates the participation of manufacturing SMEs in GVCs in terms of both backward and forward linkages. SMEs with a website tend to import a higher share of their inputs used for production and export a higher share of their sales as compared to SMEs without a website. Furthermore, the findings indicate that the effect of having a website on GVC participation is stronger for SMEs than for large firms. Beyond digital connectivity at the firm level, we also assess the role of a country's ICT infrastructure in facilitating GVC participation of SMEs. We find that SMEs tend to participate more in GVCs in countries where a higher share of the population has fixed broadband subscriptions. This result also holds if we control for other country-level factors such as the quality of logistics services, rule of law and access to finance. Our findings can provide guidance for policy makers in developing countries about the importance of investing in ICT infrastructure, creating a regulatory and policy environment conducive to e-commerce, and providing SMEs and workers with the digital skills and knowledge to use ICT technologies efficiently.

show abstract

“…Using a panel of 200 countries between 1990 and 2006, Lin (2015) found that Internet use reduced information costs in international trade, obtaining results similar to those of Choi (2010). Osnago and Tan (2016) examined data from 2001 to 2013 and found that higher Internet use by both exporters and importers increased trade value. Similar results were obtained in studies specifi c to China.…”

mentioning

confidence: 75%

How the Internet Promotes China's Exports: A Firm‐level Perspective

Zhen

Ding

et al. 2020

China and World Economy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The development of information and communications technology (ICT), particularly the Internet, has reduced trade costs. However, it remains unclear whether these reduced costs are reflected in the "extensive margins" of firms' exports (which refer to the probability of fi rms exporting) or the "intensive margins" (which refer to the value of fi rms' export). To test this, we used the concepts of information cost and binary margins, an augmented trade model of firm heterogeneity, a two-stage Heckman estimation, and data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey of Chinese fi rms in 2012. The results revealed that reduced trade costs from the use of ICT were positively related to extensive margins but that the connection with intensive margins was not signifi cant. The results lead to the conclusion that reduced information costs related to a firm's exporting behavior were primarily reflected in variable trade costs. This study offers theoretical and empirical evidence for China's policies towards the Internet, which are relevant for the export of manufactured goods. The government should encourage the use of ICT to enhance fi rms' export opportunities while facing current trade policy uncertainty.

show abstract

Disaggregating the Impact of the Internet on International Trade

Cited by 27 publications

References 10 publications

Internet, Participation in International Trade and Tax Revenue Instability

Internet, Participation in International Trade and Tax Revenue Instability

E-commerce and Developing Country-SME Participation in Global Value Chains

How the Internet Promotes China's Exports: A Firm‐level Perspective

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About