Production Efficiency, Technology Progress And The "resource Curse"

From the development of the world economy, natural resources is the importantmaterial foundation for a national economic, however, some countries (regions) inrich natural resources develop slowly, while some nations in poor resourcesachieves a rather fast development of economy since the50s of the20th century, thisphenomenon is called “resource curse” by scholars. In China, it also exists suchphenomenon, the western regions in rich natural resources develop more slowly thanthe eastern provinces which have fewer natural resources. The modern theories ofeconomic growth show that production efficiency and technology innovation is thesource of economic growth, natural resources itself can’t hinder economicdevelopment, whether rich natural resources will damage to enhance the efficiency ofthe production and technological innovation happening. In view of this, the paperselects the datas of28provinces in China, and constructs the panel data model, andanalyzes the relationship of resource abundance and production efficiency, technologyinnovation.Firstly, The paper reviews the "resource curse" the theory by showingdevelopment course and the transmission mechanism. then, according to theendogenous growth theory, we construct a three department model, obtaining therelationship of abundant resources research and technology innovation, the resultsindicate that the natural resources abundant region is disadvantageous to technologicalinnovation, revealing why the area in abundant resources lags behind In theory.Before the empirical analysis, we demonstrate how to select the important index, itmainly includes the following two parts: first, we distinguish two important concepts:abundant resources and resource dependent,and according to the actual situation inour country, and we get a reasonable natural resources index; Second, we use the dataenvelopment method to get production efficiency and technology innovationindicators. In the empirical analysis part, we use panel data analysis method to studythe relationship between resource abundance and production efficiency, technologyinnovation. Finally, according to the empirical results, we put forward somecorresponding policy recommendations on the development of regions which have theabundant resourcesThe main conclusions of paper are as follows:(1) From the empirical result, abundant natural resources indeed restraininnovation and hinder efficiency, and the results of the estimate was robust. Theoutputs of the model was consistent with the results in theory. This shows that one ofthe important reasons of the region in abundant resources is that these areas are lackof the environment which can promote innovation and productivity effiency, therefore,government should consider it,when they make out economic policies for regionaldevelopment.(2) Joining control variables such as import scale, education investment,industrial structure, the degree of marketization, we find the import scale willsignificantly promote production efficiency and technology innovation, the lowerlevel of the market will enhance the efficiency of the production and technologicalinnovation, education investment and industrial structure have no effects onproduction efficiency and technology innovation. Successively joining the controlvariables, although natural resources coefficient is still negative, but the significancehas reduced, it shows that the control variables can some relief the "curse" of natural resources to the production efficiency and technology innovation, abundant resourcesarea should further expand imports in size, grow of the education input, and activelyadjust the industrial structure, deepen the reform of state-owned enterprises andpromote economic growth, realizing the people’s common prosperity...