Resource Curse, Research, And Regional Economic Growth

Recent studies show that natural resources will not necessarily bring about rapid economic growth. International developing experience shows that countries or regions rich in natural resources tends to growth slower than those poor in natural resources, that is to say, abundant natural resources hinder economic growth. This phenomenon is called "resource curse" in economics, which attracts much attention of academics.From the domestic situation, natural resources of our country is distributed much uneven, the central and western regions are rich in resources, dense, most of the eastern coastal areas are limited in natural resources, even lack of resources in long-term. However, the reality of economic development is that central and western provinces with abundant natural resources have poorer economic performance than those eastern coastal provinces poor in natural resources. For example, economic growth rate of Shanxi, Heilongjiang, Yunnan is slower that of Zhejiang, Jiangsu and such places. More seriously, with the exploitation of resources, many resources areas are getting poorer rather than getting richer. Resource advantages of these areas are not transforming into economic advantages, but "rich poverty".International academic research and the reality of our country lead us to these questions: although the gap between China's regional economic growth is obviously caused by the timing order of reforming and opening, industrial base, the location from coastal, however, what a role does the endowments difference of natural resources play in forming the gap? if it does, what is the transmission mechanism. Around these core questions, a systematic analysis was carried out on theoretical base of resource economics, industrial economics and regional economics. By using of a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis methods, some questions were discussed such as the definition of resource curse, the impact of resource curse on economic growth and its transmission mechanism, the countermeasures and suggestions to overcome resource curse. It is specifically distributed in the following research issue:1 .Resource curse exist in our country whether or notIn this part of this paper, econometric method was used to study relationship between natural resources endowment and regional economic growth rate. Long-term regression result tends to show that natural resources play a negative role on economic growth to some extent, excessive dependence on abundant natural resources led to a slow economic growth rate; short-term regression results, seemingly shows he elimination of the "resource curse", GDP growth fast in the short term because of resource prices goes high. But this growth reduced the inputs in manufacturing sectors, which is bound to weaken the long-term economic growth dynamics, forming a new "resource curse" trap.2. Industrial structure—one transmission mechanismIn this part of this paper, theoretical analysis and empirical testing proved the opinion: industrial structure supererogation can promote economic growth. However, abundant natural resources in some ways impede the normal evolution of the industrial structure. It cause resource regions depend on resource extraction industries with high input, low output in a long time. High value-added industries such as manufacturing sectors, as well as the third industry can not grow up, weakening long-term economic growth dynamics. This is an important transmission mechanism of "resource curse".3.Technological innovation and technological progress—another transmission mechanismEndogenous economic growth theory suggests that technological innovation and technological progress are source of economic growth, technological innovation theory shows that technological innovation is implemented by regional technology innovation system. Sometimes too much natural resources has a negative impact on innovation participant, innovation resources and innovation environment, thus affecting technological progress and technological innovation of an area, and ultimately affect the region's economic growth. In this part of this paper, a mathematical model was developed to describes the impact and process, also a econometrics model was established to confirm this idea.4.Countermeasures and suggestionsA main framework was built to solve "resource curse", which is changing resource advantages into capital advantage, changing capital advantage into industrial advantages, changing industrial advantages into technological advantages, so as to keep sustainable and rapid economic development. Specifically, the first step is to solve the questions of income distribution, set up a relatively fair distribution mechanism of resources income to prevent the loss of resource revenues; and the second step involves the use of resources income, resources income should be used properly such as to support local industry, optimize the investment environment, to introduce skilled personnel; the final step is cultivation of sustainable development resource, focused on human resources, technology resources.