توسعه مالی و رشد اقتصادی: شواهد از چین

This paper investigates the relationship between financial development and economic growth for the case of China over the period 1952–2001. After considering the time series characteristics of the dataset, a multivariate vector autoregressive (VAR) framework is used as an appropriate specification and the long-run relationship among financial development, growth and other key growth factors is analyzed in a theoretically based high dimensional system by identification of co-integrating vectors through tests of over-identifying restrictions. The empirical results suggest that there exists a unidirectional causality from economic growth to financial development, conclusions departing distinctively from those in the previous studies.

The economic growth of China is remarkable since the outset of the reform program in early 1980s. A great number of theoretical and empirical studies have explored the sources of economic growth at both national and provincial levels (e.g., Borensztein and Ostry, 1996, Chen and Feng, 2000, Chow, 1993, Chow and Li, 2002, Wu, 2000 and Yu, 1998), and ongoing debate is mainly concerned with which source, factor accumulation or productivity improvement, is the key growth-driving factor. However, unfortunately, the role of financial development in economic growth has till recently often been ignored, with a conspicuous lack of studies being made to theoretically examine and empirically determine this. The effects of the financial sector on real economy can hardly be over-emphasized, as Goldsmith (1969, p. 390) puts “one of the most important problems in the field of finance… is the effect that financial structure and development have on economic growth”.

By implementing a multivariate VAR framework to the annual data of China in her 1952–2001 periods, we have empirically examined the long-run relationships among financial development, growth and other key growth factors, and evaluated the causality between financial development and economic growth. We have also tested the robustness of our empirical results using different indicator of financial development. Together, we find that financial development, physical capital stock, international trade and real interest rate are all economically and significantly related to economic growth. However, there exists only a unidirectional causality from economic growth to financial development, findings that depart distinctively from those in most empirical studies. We attribute our finding to that: (i) we confront the omitted variable bias in the multivariate VAR framework by examining the relationship between financial development and economic growth within a higher dimensional system; (ii) we utilize advanced statistical methods and theoretically based restrictions to identify the long-run relationships among various indicators; (iii) we measure variables as best as we could, and we also address the stock-flow problem inherent in all the indicators measurements.