Capital account opening and economic growth——an empirical test based on systematic GMM

Abstract

This paper collected panel data of 74 countries from 1990 to 2017, and based on the Chinn-It index to depict the degree of capital account opening. Under the framework of the neoclassical economic growth model, the impact of capital account opening on economic growth was empirically tested by systematic GMM. The results show that: first, taking the overall capital account openness as the explanatory variable, the coefficient of the capital account openness of the whole sample is significantly positive. Further, considering the national differences found that high income countries capital account openness coefficient is significantly positive, but in low and middle-income countries capital account openness coefficient on economic and statistical significance were not significant, indicating that high income countries made open dividends, while in low and middle-income countries and earnings in the capital account liberalization. Finally, it proposes to open the capital account sub-projects step by step, strengthen prudent supervision in the process of further opening the capital account, and improve the regulatory legal system.