تعیین ارتباط بین توسعه مالی و اقتصاد: شواهدی از یک مدل ضریب کارکرد

Noting that “one size does not fit all” in the case of the finance–development (FD) relationship, a growing body of literature has recently focused on uncovering economic conditions under which financial development could be beneficial (detrimental) to economic development. We look into these conditions by means of a flexible semiparametric approach that allows the long-run FD link to depend on measurable economic factors. Using annual data for 73 economies spanning the period 1975–2011, we find that the impact of finance on economic development is generally stronger in high-income than low-income economies. However, allowing for intra-group variations reveals the importance of other factor variables in explaining the FD link. For instance, increasing financial development strengthens the FD link while increasing government size weakens it. Moreover, the FD link could even be negative if low- and lower-middle-income economies have very large governments or are extremely open to international trade.

The importance of services and instruments of the financial system to the real economic sector has been recognized in the literature at least since Schumpeter (1911). However, there are economists who argue that finance does not matter to economic development. According to this view, either the financial system passively responds to the demand arising from the real sector and not vice versa (Robinson, 1952), or there is not at all a meaningful relationship between financial and economic development (Lucas, 1988). The intensive research on the link between financial and economic development in the last two decades has documented mixed results.1

We investigate economic factors underlying the FD nexus by means of semiparametric functional coefficient models on a data set comprising 73 economies over the period 1975–2011. We find that the FD link is dependent on an economy's level of economic and financial development, government size, trade openness and financial openness. However, the dependence of the FD link on the level of inflation is weak. Moreover, the effects of the economic factors on the FD link are diagnosed to be variant across distinct stages of economic development. We find the average FD link to be positive and to increase across income groups. In particular, low-income economies obtain the least benefit from financial development while high-income economies enjoy almost three times as much benefit. Similarly, financial development has a generally positive effect on the FD nexus, with the strongest FD link observed in low-income economies with a high level financial development. There are also cases where financial development could have an adverse effect on economic development. This is observed in low- and lower-middle-income economies when they have very large governments or are extremely open to international trade. The impact of openness to trade on the FD relationship varies between lower-middle- and upper-middle-income economies. Upper-middle-income economies show a pronounced FD nexus when they are highly open to international trade. Yet, only a moderate level of trade openness is beneficial to lower-middle-income economies and being extremely open is found to induce a negative FD relationship. Finally, increasing financial openness strengthens the FD nexus to some extent, but very high levels of financial openness significantly weaken the FD nexus.