金融发展与城乡收入差距关系的经验分析

An Empirical Analysis of Financial Development and Urban-Rural Income Gap in China

现代金融发展理论的主流观点是金融发展对经济增长意义重大。按照这种理论逻辑,中国金融非均衡发展应该会产生显著的经济后果。文章基于VAR模型及其协整分析,利用Granger因果检验法,对中国1978～2002年间金融发展与城乡收入差距的关系作出实证研究。实证结果表明,金融发展与城乡收入差距关系存在着一种长期均衡关系;金融发展规模与城乡收入差距正相关且两者具有双向的Granger因果关系;金融发展效率与城乡收入差距负相关且两者也具有双向的Granger因果关系。文章的政策含义是,从解决金融发展非均衡问题上着手来缩小城乡收入差距是有现实意义的。

Financial development is important to economic growth, which is the dominant idea in modern theory of financial development. According to this reasoning, non-equilibrium financial development in China may lead to negative economic consequences. By VAR modeling, co-integration analysis and Granger causality test, this paper studies empirically the financial development and urban-rural income gap in China during the period from 1978 to 2002. The empirical research shows that a long-run equilibrium relation exists between financial development and urban-rural income gap, at the same time a positive correlation and bilateral Granger causality lie between financial development dimension and urban-rural income gap.Besides,a negative correlation and bilateral Granger causality exist between financial development efficiency and urban-rural income gap. The policy implication in this paper is that urban-rural income gap could be bridged if non-equilibrium financial development could be rectified.