The Effects Of Natural Capital On China's Economic Growth

China's reform and opening up has made rapid economic growth.While,there is different degree of ecological degradation in some places.Because of Insufficient amount of natural capital,combined with the high-speed development of the industrialization and urbanization stage,the economic development has high pressure on natural ecology.The central put the construction of ecological civilization in prominent strategic position,"protect the ecological environment is to protect productivity,improve the ecological environment is to develop productivity."Accelerating the construction of ecological civilization,adhering to the green development need investment into the natural ecology.Natural capital investment will affect the economic development of our country.Can natural capital promote economic growth?What is the mechanism of natural capital effects on economic growth?Are there any regional differences?To answer these question,this article first to defines natural capital,and reviews related literature;Next,in an augmented MRW model framework,theoretical analysis was carried out on the economic growth effect of natural capital,and using panel data to test the effect of natural capital on economic growth,mechanism and regional differences empirically.In this paper,the main research contents and conclusions are as follows.The first chapter is introduction.This part introduces the research background,research significance,research methods,research contents and technical route,as well as research innovation points and deficiencies.In the second chapter,main concepts and literatures are to be reviewed.This chapter firstly put forward by the analysis of natural capital background,domestic and foreign scholars on the definition of natural capital,and pointed out in this paper,natural capital only refers to the ecosystem.Second on the environment quality,natural resources,the relationship between natural capital and economic growth literature were reviewed.Finally proposed the key problem of the research of this paper.In the third chapter,effects of natural capital on economic growth are tested by theoretical analysis and empirical analysis respectively.In the augmented MRW,theory analysis shows that natural capital has effect on economic growth.By building a multidimensional index of natural capital,using static and dynamic panel model respectively,to simulate the effects of natural capital on economic growth empirically.The empirical results show that natural capital has significant positive effect on economic growth,consistent with the theoretical analysis.In the fourth chapter,potential channels through which natural capital affects economic growth are tested.The empirical results show that the human capital accumulation,technological progress and industrial structure optimization are potential channels of natural capital affecting economic growth.The externalities of natural capital helps to enhance the level of people's health and promote the human capital accumulation and agglomeration,and promote economic growth;At the same time,natural capital has effects on improving technology level and industrial structure optimization through human capital supply.The fifth chapter,analyses regional differences of natural capital effects on economic growth.By building dynamic panel model,using the east,Midwest subsample,this part investigates regional differences on the economic growth effect of natural capital,the empirical results show that the natural capital of the eastern Midwest consistent economic growth effect,even if the effect of numerical present decreasing from the east side unto the west side of the ladder distribution.Through the dynamic panel model to add interaction between natural capital and the level of economic development or human capital level,investigation of natural capital growth requires the existence of different economic development level or the level of human capital.The empirical results show that the economic growth effect of natural capital does not exist the differences of region or the level of economic development.Chapter 6,as the main conclusion and research prospect,summarizes the main conclusions of this study and gives the corresponding policy meaning.According to the deficiency existing in this paper,further research is discussed.Innovation points of this article are mainly in the following respects:Point one,building multi-dimensional index system of natural capital.Existing in the study,measurement of natural capital,mostly using a single or two indicators,the corresponding reliability and robustness of the results is low.This article selects multidimensional index including the forest coverage rate,woodland forest volume per unit area,wetland area ratio,to measure natural capital,thus improves the scientific nature of the empirical research.Point two,conducting the empirical research of growth effect and its mechanism of natural capital on economic.Can natural capital investment promote or hinder the economic growth,and what are potential channels natural capital affect economic growth through which,has few literature reports.This paper expands on natural capital in the production function,theoretical analysis was carried out on the economic growth effect of natural capital,and builds a static model and dynamic panel to research natural capital effects on economic growth by empirical study.Point three,analysing regional difference effects of natural capital on economic growth.This paper uses panel data to analyse empirically,the empirical results show that effects of the natural capital on economic growth do not exist the differences of region or the level of economic growth.