Disappearing Demographic Dividend,Internet Popularization And Trade Gains

As the aging of the global population over recent years,many countries with demographic dividend have gradually entered the tail end of the demographic dividend window.These countries are losing the export advantage of labor-intensive products brought by the demographic dividend.At the same time,the popularity of the Internet in countries around the world has also promoted the rise of new trade methods such as cross-border e-commerce.By which way to seize new opportunities and improve their ability to reap trade gains is a serious problem for countries with declining demographic dividends.Therefore,it is of great significance to study whether the popularity of the Internet can reduce the loss of trade gains caused by the decline in the demographic dividend in these countries.First of all,by combing the literature of relevant research directions at home and abroad,this thesis determines the connotation of trade gains,that is,the value added obtained by a country in international trade under the background of global value chain division of labor.Less research has been done to explore the impact of declining demographic dividends and Internet penetration on trade benefits from the perspective of value added,so this thesis complements this research.Then,it brings the demographic dividend and Internet popularization into the same analytical framework.It also analyzes the impact mechanism through two ways: labor cost and labor productivity.This is another marginal contribution of this thesis.Based on the theoretical analysis,there are three hypotheses in this thesis: Hypothesis one is that the decline of demographic dividend will reduce a country’s trade gains,and Internet popularization will improve a country’s trade gains.The second hypothesis is that the popularity of the Internet will reduce a degree of the adverse impact of the decline of demographic dividend on trade gains.Meanwhile,that has a threshold effect.The last hypothesis is that the Internet reduces the adverse impact of the decline of demographic dividend on trade gains by restraining the rise of labor costs and improving labor productivity.In order to make these hypotheses attested,this thesis uses three different empirical models: panel fixed effect model,panel threshold model and structural model for regression analysis.According to the characteristics of demographic dividend recession,this thesis selects the panel data of 33 countries with late demographic dividend from1995 to 2018 for empirical analysis.The empirical regression results show that the decline in demographic dividend of late demographic dividend countries has a negative impact on trade gains.This impact is heterogeneous in late-stage demographic dividend countries with different GNI levels.Internet popularization can promote the improvement of trade gains by improving labor productivity,and reduce the adverse impact of the decline of demographic dividend on trade gains to a certain extent.Among them,there is a threshold effect on the adverse impact of the decline in the demographic dividend on trade gains,because there is a network effect in the development of the Internet,and the higher the level of Internet popularity,the lower the negative impact of the decline in the demographic dividend on trade gains.This threshold effect exists in countries with late demographic dividends at different GNI levels.In addition,labor productivity is the intermediary of the demographic dividend and the popularity of the Internet affecting trade gains,and labor costs are not the intermediaries of the two affecting trade gains.Through empirical research,this thesis provides some ideas for how countries with declining demographic dividends can improve their trade gains.It mainly expounds from five aspects: introducing foreign talents,paying attention to the construction of domestic Internet infrastructure,building a free internet learning platform for domestic workers,regular Internet cross-border trade training for small and medium-sized export enterprises and fertility policy development.