In order to reveal the relationship and mechanisms of inland water transport and the regional economic growth, we established the autoregressive distributed lag model and VAR model, and conducted the impulse response analysis according to the Chongqing “ inland water transport-regional economic”composite system data during 1985—2009. The results show that there is only a one-way causal relationship between inland water transport development and regional economic growth; The development of inland water transport has a strong stimulating effect to the regional economic growth; The development of inland water transport has a strong regional economic growth stimulating effect, which will be more significant in the long term; The regional economic growth cannot spontaneously promote or even inhibit the development of inland water transport.