社会资本的经济增长效应

全面而准确地探究社会资本对长期经济增长的影响机制,对提升社会资本在区域经济发展中的地位具有重大的现实意义,但传统的内生增长模型忽略了时间配置对社会资本积累与居民效用的影响.文章将社会资本积累过程内生化,构建了纳入社会资本的水平创新增长模型,综合考虑社会资本和闲暇时间对经济增长的非单调性影响,通过数值模拟发现:社会资本对经济增长具有边际效应递减的促进作用;而闲暇时间与经济增长之间呈现倒U形关系,即适当地增加闲暇时间有利于社会资本积累.文章还基于结构型社会资本的网络嵌入性特征,构建了地级市层面的社会资本测度指标,以验证社会资本具备生产要素的属性.实证结果表明:社会资本对经济增长具有显著的正向影响,其促进作用随着区域内城市经济发展水平的提高而提升;中西部地区社会资本的产出效率高于东部地区,从而间接反映了东部地区社会资本过度集聚的现状;投资水平与技术进步是社会资本影响经济增长的两条重要途径.上述结论为明晰社会资本的经济属性、激发社会资本的经济效益、推动城市集群协调发展以及缩小地区差异提供了有益的借鉴.

The Impact of Social Capital on Economic Growth

Comprehensively and accurately exploring the impact of social capital on the long-term economic growth is of great practical significance to the enhancement of the status of social capital in the regional economic development.However, traditional endogenous growth model ignores the effect of time allocation on social capital accumulation and residents' utility.This paper introduces social capital into horizontal innovation growth model by using endogenous accumulation of social capital, and comprehensively considers the non-monotonicity impacts of social capital and leisure time on economic growth.Numerical simulations show that social capital plays a promotion role with a diminishing marginal effect in economic growth, but there is an inverse U-shape relationship between leisure time and economic growth, namely the appropriate increase in leisure time is beneficial to the accumulation of social capital.In order to verify the attribute of production factor of social capital, this paper constructs the measurement indexes of social capital at prefecture-level city level based on the network embeddedness feature of structural social capital.The empirical results show as follows: firstly, social capital has a significantly positive impact on economic growth, and its promotion role strengthens as urban economic development within regions increases;secondly, the output efficiency of social capital in the central and western regions is higher than the one in the eastern region, indirectly reflecting the current situation of excessive accumulation of social capital in the eastern region;thirdly, investment level and technological progress are two important ways to affect economic growth by social capital.These conclusions above provide useful reference for clarifying the economic attribute of social capital, stimulating the economic benefits of social capital, promoting the coordinated development of urban clusters and reducing regional differences.