Resource abundance and economic growth in China

Rui Fan, Ying Fang and Sung Y. Park

China Economic Review, 2012, vol. 23, issue 3, 704-719

Abstract: This paper revisits the resource curse phenomenon in China and differs from the previous studies in four respects: (i) City-level data is used; (ii) A spatial variable is constructed to estimate the diffusion effect of natural resources among cities in the same province; (iii) The impact of resource abundance on economic development is investigated not only at the city level but also at the prefectural level in China; (iv) We use a functional coefficient regression model to deal with city-specific heterogeneity and, at the same time, analyze the transmission mechanism of the resource curse phenomenon. Our empirical results show that there is no significant evidence to support the existence of a resource curse phenomenon in China. On the other hand, we find that the degree of natural resource abundance in a city has a positive diffusion effect on the economic growth of neighboring cities within the same province at the city level, but not at prefectural levels. We attribute this to the urban bias policy.

Keywords: Resource curse; Diffusion effects; Transmission channels; Functional coefficient model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 O18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (33)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:chieco:v:23:y:2012:i:3:p:704-719

DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2012.04.007

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