A Study On The Empirical Analysis Of The Resource Curse Hypothesis Based On The Social Capital

Resource curse hypothesis mainly shows resource is negatively related to the economic growth. Since the 20 th century, many countries or regions with abundant resource fell into the growth trap, this phenomenon has attracted the attention of many scholars. Existing studies show that the economic growth rate of countries or regions with abundant resource was lower than those countries which natural resource is poor. Looking at the domestic, we can also find the similar phenomenon, the natural resource in the western region is rich, and including coal, oil, natural gas and other abundant resource, however, the economic development of western region is relatively backward. In our country, although the natural resource of coastal areas is relatively poor, however the economic growth rate in these areas is very high, the “rich poverty” phenomenon is very common, in other words, these areas has the “resource curse” phenomenon.Therefore, on the basis of combing the “resource curse” transmission mechanism, we choose the provincial panel data of the 31 regions of our country from 2003 to 2013 to study the relation between resource and economic growth. First, we set the model based the relation between the resource and economic development to verify the resource curse in our country. Secondly, we introduce the social capital into the model to analyze the role of social capital in the relation between resource and economic growth. Finally we put forward the policy recommendations which can avoid the resource curse.The result shows the importance of social capital to economic development. When the social capital is very low, because of the opaque information, some people who have the special method or channel will obtain the right of the resource monopoly, tax exemptions, even better and faster development, resulting in the inefficient or free use of the resource. But with the level of social capital increasing and once exceed a certain critical value, namely, all the people can get the resource and tax exemption fairly, then the rent-seeking will disappear, so the resource curse is likely to be broken.