Periodical "Economic Research" published in its 12th issue of 2012 the article “diversified financial structures’ "mutual clamp- coupling" effect - based on empirical evidence of Pan-Northern Gulf regional financial cooperation ”co-written by Professor Li Jian and Fan Zuojun, Xie Qiaoyan in our school.
The article discusses in depth the influence on regional economic cooperation brought by the cooperation and integration between two different financial structures, bank-based financial structure and market-based structure, takes advantage of technology evolution cycle theory model, and examines the effect of different financial structures in different stages of economic development, and analyses the effect of the cross-integration between the market-based and bank-based financial structures in the background of regional cooperation, which proves that the mutual penetration and cooperation between two different financial structures have played a positive role in the process of regional economic development.
In recent years, regional economic cooperation has been an important trend in the background of economic globalization, there are more and more discussions and researches on it. The regional financial cooperation is a major aspect of regional economic cooperation. On the one hand, we have been promoting the regional economic cooperation all the time from a point of view of supporting regional economic cooperation without theoretical argument on the effect of regional financial cooperation, let alone theoretical demonstration on the effects of these two kinds of financial structures’ promoting cooperation. On the other hand, we mainly discuss the relationship between financial structure and economic development with regard to the financial structure, and both domestic and foreign scholars have respectively raised standpoints such as the bank-led theory, market-driven theory, financial services theory, and legal-led theory, but none of them has proved the influence that these two kinds of financial structures’ integration has on the regional economic cooperation. Therefore, the discussion on the cooperation between these two financial structure models is an important practical guidance.
From the perspective of liquidity, bank-based financial structure and market-based financial structure take turns to have comparative advantage at different times and stages of economic development, that is, the bank-based financial structure has a comparative advantage in countries where its economic development is at its beginning, and with the economic developing, the rising financial intermediation costs of the bank as an intermediary and falling costs of financial markets led to a comparative advantage of the market-based financial structure. And when the economic development has entered a mature stage, both bank-based financial structure and market-based financial structure come to a clear division of labor. Functional differences and cooperation between these two financial structure make is possible and necessary to achieve their "mutual clamp ".
The article uses DEA technique adapted by Fare el al(1994) to investigate the optimum efficiency frontier in Pan- Northern Gulf Economic Zone, and compare member countries’ financial structures where the DEA did not achieve optimal efficiency with the optimum efficiency frontier in order to identify the changes in financial structure’s efficiency, redundancy of investment and lack of output in the Pan- Northern Gulf Economic Zone, and analyses the efficiency of financial structures in the Pan- Northern Gulf Economic Zone from five aspects including the comprehensive productivity efficiency of the financial structure, the technical efficiency of the financial structure, technical progress efficiency of the financial structure, the decomposition of the comprehensive efficiency and technical efficiency of the financial structure, thus, comes to the specific causes of the change in the value of financial comprehensive efficiency. The authors found, the number of countries where DEA are effective is unstable and the development of the comprehensive productivity of financial structure in different countries is volatile as a whole, which shows an obvious fluctuation and alternates between high position and low position every year, but there is also a slight downward trend overall, while the development of the comprehensive productivity of financial structure in different countries is out of balance. In addition, the authors also found that technical efficiency values Pan-Northern Gulf Economic Zone as a whole is comparatively high, which is greater than or equal to 1 most of the year in most countries, and at the same time, the technical progress efficiency in these countries is generally low, which indicates the low utilization of new technology in the Pan-Northern Gulf economic zone. After decomposition, the authors believe that the causes of the inefficiency of comprehensive productivity are the low technical efficiency and technological progress efficiency, and factors influencing changes in technical efficiency are the pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency.
The study concluded is of great importance and inspiration in promoting the development of economic and financial cooperation in the important sub-regional cooperation, China - ASEAN Free Trade Area, and plays an important role in promoting the integration of financial structures in diversified areas to make full use of financial factors. The Pan-Northern Gulf countries should take the "the Framework of China - ASEAN Agreement on Comprehensive Economic Cooperation" and "ASEAN Charter" as a precondition, respect the development tendency of each member country's financial structure model, and take advantage of the use of differences in financial structure to achieve the cross-integration of different financial structures and the coupling effect of the diversified financial structures in regional cooperation.
In order to achieve a greater degree of differentiated financial structure coupling in regional cooperation, the authors propose to follow the principle of emphasizing on both demand and supply, respect the differences and development tendency in member countries’ financial structure and promote the integration of regional financial structures in the Pan-Northern countries step by step.
