Research On The Impact Of The Internet Popularization On "The Belt And Road" Regional Economy Growth

The popularity of Internet technology has brought tremendous development opportunities to countries along the "The Belt and Road".The Internet has become an important force to promote economic development of the "The Belt and Road" region.This paper sorts out the state economy,internet development status of countries along "The Belt and Road",and the Chinese foreign investment situation,qualitatively illustrates the impact of Internet popularization on the economy of the countries along"The Belt and Road".As a technology,the Internet can have a direct impact on the economy,but also indirectly stimulate economic growth by influencing other factors.The research topic of this paper is limited to the study of the impact of Internet development on the economic development of the countries along the belt,and the assessment of economic impact effects are mainly based on economic growth indicators,specifically based on the core indicator GDP of macroeconomic development.Therefore,in the empirical analysis part,this paper draws on Romer’s endogenous economic growth theory,incorporates the Internet as a technological factor into the production function,chooses GDP as a dependent variable,Internet penetration rate,capital input and total labor force as independent variables,and constructs Panel Data model.Before panel data regression,LLC and ADF test methods are used to test the unit root of each variable data,and the first-order difference processing of the unstable sequence is carried out to ensure the stability of the sequence.KAO test method is used to test the cointegration of the model to ensure the long-term equilibrium relationship between variables.Then,the mixed effect,fixed effect and random effect regression were carried out,and the fixed effect model was determined by F test and Hausman test.This paper uses the panel data of 48 countries along the "the Belt and Road" from 1997 to 2016 to analyze the overall contribution rate and the trend of impact of Internet penetration to the economic growth of all countries along "the Belt and Road".The result shows that the Internet has a positive effect on the"the Belt and Road" regional economic growth.Although the overall role of Internet technology elements is not as great as that of labor and capital elements,its promotion has gradually increased over time.In order to verify the impact of the "one belt and one road" initiative on the Internet economic effect,the interaction between Internet penetration rate and China’s foreign direct investment is introduced into the model,and the panel data of 45 countries along "the Belt and Road" from 2003 to 2016 are used for regression analysis.It’s found that Chinese foreign investment has a significant effect on the economic effect of the Internet along the country of "the Belt and Road".The differences in economic and Internet development between countries along the belt and road are relatively large.Therefore,this article further classifications the countries along the border according to the income level,and introduces control variables in the model to test the economic impact of the Internet on different income level countries.It is found that the Internet has a significant positive impact on the economies of countries with various income levels.Moreover,except for the economic effects of the Internet in low-income countries is bigger,the impact of the Internet on the economies of the countries has basically increased with the increase in income levels.The economic development mode of high-income countries is relatively diversified,and factors such as capital,labor,science and technology,industrial structure,and international trade all have significant effects on the economy.Middle-income countries are currently mainly capital-driven economic development models,and only capital and Internet penetration have a significant positive effect on the economy.The middle-lower income countries are mainly capital-oriented economies,and the improvement of science and technology and the optimization of industrial structure have also significantly promoted economic growth.However,because the infrastructure construction of the Internet in the middle-lower income countries is relatively backward,and compared with the low-income countries,the economic effect of the initial stage of the Internet is no longer obvious.Thus,among all income-level countries,the Internet has the least impact on the economy on countries with lower-middle incomes.In low-income countries,labor is still the main driver,and the control variables that are added do not have a significant impact on the economies of low-income countries.Based on the above research results,this paper puts forward relevant policy advices for the China which is "the Belt and Road" initiative country,and the countries along "the Belt and road".