The Theory Of Natural Resources And Its Measurement

China’s economy has enjoyed strong growth since the reform and opening up. However, followed are the increasing regional economic disparity and serious environmental issues.Consequently, ecological construction draws much attention from our leadership during China’s "Two Congresses".Serving as the material basis of human survival,natural resources not only promote economic growth by offering energy and mineral,but also provide protection for sustainable development though ecosystems.However, the effect of natural resources is being questioned gradually with the proposed argument of"Curse of Natural Resources".Therefore, research on the mechanism of natural resources and economic growth should be carried out so as to develop rational development policy.This article estimates the value of the annual flow of natural resources for each province and investigates the relation between regional resource dependence and economic development. It mainly includes the following respects:(1)Based on the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals,it constructs a comprehensive index system for natural resource accounting, thereby forming dependence index on regional resources.(2) It estimates the value of the annual flow of natural resources and conducts analysis with respect to the two dimensions of time and space, and investigates regional indigenous endowment and the dependence of economic development on resources.(3)It measures comprehensively the regional economic aggregate and economic structure, and also studies the degree of coordination between the resource and economy relying on the Theory of "Grey Relation Entropy".(4) Based on the "Threshold Regression Technique" and the index system received above, and also taking into the account economic system, human resources, physical capital and research development, it analyzes the influence mechanism of natural resources on regional economic development.(5)Based on the research result, it gives some corresponding suggestions and solutions to promote regional development and to narrow down the economic gap between different regions.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)The dependence on resources for each province changes with time and tends to have an increase, but there is significant difference with respect to the structure of resource dependence.Although far greater than non-renewable resources, the value of the annual flow of ecosystem is easily omitted.(2) Regional resources and economic development coordination degree generally showes a trend of deterioration, the"Curse of Natural Resources" phenomenon still exists.(3)The extent of curse is reduced with higher rate of material capital investment, proving the necessity of"circular economy".