The Impact of Financial Hoarding on Economic Growth in China

In recent years, more and more funds circulate internally in the financial field, which is called “financial hoarding”. After calculations, the scale of China’s financial hoarding was 242,178 billion yuan in the first quarter of 2003 and jumped to 1,801,706 billion yuan in the fourth quarter of 2016, which increased by nearly 7.4 times in the past 14 years and accelerated after 2014. The phenomenon that large amounts of money deviate from the real economy to virtual economy is called “shift from real economy to virtual economy”. The large scale of financial hoarding will inevitably influence the economic growth in China. Does financial hoarding promote or inhibit the economy? Does the relationship change with the economic growth rate? To address this issue, this paper first provided theoretical analysis of the relationship between financial hoarding and economic growth. Then, it used the data of the first quarter of 2003 through the fourth quarter of 2016 in China for empirical analysis. The results revealed two facts. Firstly, the simultaneous equations model showed that financial hoarding and economic growth promote each other in the long run and financial hoarding can be conducive to economic growth. Secondly, the MS-VAR model showed that the relationship between financial hoarding and economic growth changed with the economic growth rate. In addition, financial hoarding had a positive effect on the economic growth under both medium and high economic growth regimes, but to a greater extent in high economic growth regimes.