사회복지지출이 경제성장을 저해하는가?도구변수법과 구조방정식모형을 이용한 실증 분석

초록

This paper empirically investigates the effect of the social expenditure on the economic growth. The problem of reverse causality makes it hard to discern the effect of the social expenditure on the economic growth. This paper shows that negative relationship found in OLS disappears when the endogeneity is controled by using instrument variables or structural equation modeling (SEM). We even find a statistically significant positive relationship when 1-period lagged social expenditure is used. Our estimates predict that one standard deviation increase in the social expenditure, 5.9%p, increases annual economic growth by 0.8～1.0%. Our results imply that it is important to control for reverse causality when analyzing the effect of the social expenditure on the growth. A natural policy implication of our study is that the social expenditure does not harm economic growth and that it is necessary to increase appropriately the social expenditure with economic growth and social development.

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