A Study on the Impact of Sport Industry on Economic Growth: An Investigation from China

Abstract

Prior literature has posited that the sport industry has been effective method to drive the economic growth. Given the rationale, this study sets China as a research object with a quarterly data from the first quarter of 2003 to the fourth quarter of 2017 to explore how the sport industry affects economic growth. This study employed Johansen cointegration test and dynamic ordinary least squares as methods for an empirical analysis. The input of sport industry, the labor input, the capital input, and the economic growth are used as research variables. The results show that there is a long-run relationship among them. Johansen cointegration test’s estimation indicated that 1% increase in the input of sport industry will lead to 0.064% increase in economic growth. Dynamic ordinary least squares’ estimation showed that whenever in the one lead, in the one lag and in the present period, the input of sport industry always poses a positive effect on economic growth. Labor input also has a positive effect on economic growth. The capital input has a negative effect on economic growth. Finally, even though the input of sport industry has a positive effect on economic growth, its impact on economic growth is relative weak.