再认识高等教育扩张的经济增长效应:架起高储蓄与高增长之间的桥梁

Ｒe-examining Effects of Higher Education Expansion on Economic Growth in China: Bridging the Gap between High Savings and High Growth

传统研究主要基于教育支出和人力资本的角度，分析教育扩张的经济增长效应。本文基于教育扩张的桥梁作用，即高等教育扩张有助于储蓄转换为投资或消费，重新认识了高等教育扩张的增长效应。基于省级面板数据的回归分析发现，储蓄有助于高等教育规模扩张;在未控制高等教育规模的增长计量方程中，储蓄对增长的作用效果并不显著;控制高等教育规模变量后，储蓄对增长的作用效果显著为负，而高等教育规模变量显著为正。也就是说，高等教育在储蓄与增长之间扮演了非常重要的中间桥梁作用，如果储蓄不能转换为有效投资或消费，纯粹的储蓄并不能促进经济增长。而高等教育能够加速储蓄的转换，从而有助于推动增长。

Traditional studies on the effects of educational expansion on economic growth mainly focused on education expenditures and human capital accumulation． This paper re-examines the effects of higher education expansion on economic growth as a bridge in China，i． e． ，how higher education expansion helps to transmit savings into investment and consumption． Provincial-level panel data analysis shows that savings accelerate higher education expansion． Furthermore，the effect of savings on economic growth is not statistically significant if we do not control for the variable of higher education scale． After controlling for this variable，the effect of savings on growth is significantly negative，while the effect of higher education scale is significantly positive． In other words，higher education expansion plays a very important role between savings and growth． In summary，savings alone are not conducive to economic growth，but higher education expansion can accelerate the use of savings，thus promoting economic growth．