Abstract: By choosing the panel data of China’s 31 provinces and municipalities during 2002-2013, this paper establishes a fixed effects model and GMM estimation to conduct an empirical research. The results show that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the structure of insurance industry and economic growth, the direct effect and the matching effect of the structure of insurance industry on economic growth together determine the optimal structure of the insurance industry under the given state. In addition, the structure of insurance industry will be adjusted dynamically along with the changes in the industrial structure, finally it will be matched with the industrial structure, so that the optimal level conducive to economic growth can be achieved.

Key words: structure of insurance industry; economic growth; inverted U-shape; matching effect