Is FinTech making world more “inclusive”? Evidence from inclusive growth story of China

Zihao Guo, Yuetong Wei, Shuangshuang Fan and Muhammad Shahbaz

Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2024, vol. 209, issue C

Abstract: Financial technology (FinTech) functions as a world-recognized vital driver for high-quality development. Different from recent research that merely involves empirical studies of the correlation between FinTech and inclusive growth, we first employ mathematical model analysis to theoretically distinguish the underlying mechanism through which FinTech influences inclusive growth in China. Subsequently, we built a series of mathematical models to deconstruct three effects of FinTech on inclusive growth: entrepreneurship stimulation, human capital investment, and innovation promotion effect, followed by a re-examination of these mechanisms using panel data that covers 281 prefecture-level cities in China from 2011 to 2020. The empirical results show a solid positive impact of FinTech on inclusive growth in China. Further mechanism tests confirm that entrepreneurship stimulation, human capital investment, and innovation promotion serve as three plausible economic channels that account for this effect, supporting our theoretical conjecture. Moreover, we adopt machine learning algorithm to simulate different inclusive growth levels in China from 2021 to 2030 under different scenarios and therefore propose policy suggestions to bolster inclusive growth. Overall, these findings shed greater light on the FinTech-inclusive growth nexus and provide new insights into the real effects of FinTech on sustainable development in developing economies that bear resemblance to China.

Keywords: FinTech; Inclusive growth; Entrepreneurship; Human capital; Innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004016252400578X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:tefoso:v:209:y:2024:i:c:s004016252400578x

DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2024.123780

Access Statistics for this article

Technological Forecasting and Social Change is currently edited by Fred Phillips

More articles in Technological Forecasting and Social Change from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().