Influence of saving and investment for economic growth

Šalies ekonominis augimas lemia jos gyventojų gerovės kilimą, todėl mokslinėje literatūroje ekonominiam augimui ir jį lemiančių faktorių analizei skiriama nemažai dėmesio. Tarp pagrindinių šalies ekonominio augimo faktorių dažnai nurodomos investicijos. Jas savo ruožtu sąlygoja dar kiti veiksniai. Šiame straipsnyje tiriama, kaip vienas iš pagrindinių tokių veiksnių - taupymas - per investicijas veikia Lietuvos ekonomikos augimą.Economical growth is one of the main concerns of nowadays economical science, because the economical growth of any country increases the welfare of its citizens. There were developed several different theoretical growth models, which try to explain the main growth factors and processes. Parallel many empirical studies were executed to find empirical evidence to support the models or reject them. As long as the literature mainly supports the idea, that the main growth factors arc investment and saving, as a main source of the latter, the article discusses the relationships between saving, investment and growth and later checks how the theory proved itself in the case of Lithuania. The body of article consists from three main parts. The first discusses the relationships between saving, investment and growth from the theoretical standpoint. Here are reviewed two branches of economical growth theory: neoclassical and neo-Keynesian. The second part discusses empirical studies in the field of economical growth. All the empirical studies in this area arc separated in two trends: one tries to prove that investment and saving causes economical growth and another tries to prove the opposite way. In the third part of the article Lithuanian empirical data are tested against theory using a method of multiple linear regression. The finding is, that the most important factor of economical growth among all studied in an article, is saving. Somewhat less important factor of present year growth is saving rate during the previous year. No positive linear relationship between investment and economical growth was found. Authors provide several assumptions about the possible causes of strange results, which need further investigation