Resource Endowment,Political Promotion And Economic Growth

Based on provincial panel data from 2003 to 2012,this paper discusses the influence of resource endowment on political promotion of local government official and economic development.This paper emphases on the relationship between resource endowment and political promotion,through empirical examination we find that the relationship between them is invert u-shaped curve.As the resource endowment increase,the political promotion probability increase first and then decrease.Then the article analyzes the transmission mechanism of how resource endowment affect political promotion,we found that economic performance and environmental quality are two paths.In regions with abundant resource endowment,officials would like to offer preferential policies to resources industry and attract capital investment.Rapid economic growth could increase the probability of political promotion;The "resource curse" will appear when resource dependence exceed a certain threshold,diminishing marginal utility of resource endowment in stimulating the economy or even hinder economic growth.The evaluation of GDP will make the inflection point of promotion's U shape curve come ahead of time,officials blindly pursuing economic performance will lead to "resource curse" phenomenon.Due to energy intensive and highly polluting characteristic,the development of resources industry will cause adverse impact on ecological environment.In recent years,the central government gradually link environment quality and the officials achievements together,environmental pollution will reduce the probability of official promotion.The assessment of environmental quality indicators can push local governments to improve the ecological environment and the satisfaction of the residents,which could put off the appearance of promotion inflection point.Combined with the results analyzed above,this paper argues that diversify the evaluation indices of local government will help to makes better use of regional resource endowment advantage.After adding a series of control variables,this paper further analyzes the relationship between resource endowment and economic development and found that the relationship between them is also invert u-shaped curve.As the degree of resources dependence increase,the economic development level increases first and then decrease.The article also discusses the transmission channels,we found that resource endowment could enhance economic development through social capital investment,while corruption is the reason for the "resource curse".In China,the resource exploitation requires the approval of government department,corruption and rent-seeking are easy to appear during the development of resource industry.Corruption will undermine material capital investment channels,thus plays an inhibitory effect on economic growth.Resource industry has natural monopoly nature,the elaborate division of production in large-scale enterprise will lead to the lack of entrepreneurial spirit and economy vitality.Furthermore,the excessive dependence on resource economy will also have extrusion effect on private economy.To sum up,establishing fair and honest system,encouraging technological innovation and cultivating entrepreneurship are important ways to avoid the curse of resource.The results of this paper provides a different angle to study China's political promotion mechanism,it explains the promotion speed differences from the perspective of resource endowment.The political promotion mechanism discussed in this paper can help the central government to improve the official assessment indicators.It will make local officials use power more reasonably and serve better.Furthermore,this paper doesn't treat resource endowment as "gospel" or "curse" on economic development simply.Instead,it discusses the non-linear relationship between resource endowment and economic development-Focusing on the level of corruption,entrepreneurial atmosphere and other channels,this paper explain the transmission mechanism of "resource curse",which contribute to a deeper understanding about how resource endowment influence economic development.