Natural Resources, Institutional Quality, and Economic Growth in China精选.pdfVIP

Environ Resource Econ (2014) 57:323–343 DOI 10.1007/s10640-013-9673-8 Natural Resources, Institutional Quality, and Economic Growth in China Kan Ji · Jan R. Magnus · Wendun Wang Accepted: 26 April 2013 / Published online: 10 May 2013 © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 Abstract The resource curse has been mainly studied using cross-country samples. In this paper we analyze a cross-province sample from one country: China. We focus on the interplay between resource abundance, institutional quality, and economic growth, using two different measures of resource abundance (a stock: resource reserves; and a flow: resource revenues), and employing various econometric approaches including varying coefficient models. We find that resource abundance has a positive effect on economic growth at the provincial level in China between 1990 and 2008, an effect that depends nonlinearly on institutional quality (1995 confidence in courts). The ‘West China Development Drive’ policy, initiated in 2000, caused substantial changes, which we investigate through a comparative panel-data analysis. Keywords Natural resource curse · Economic growth · China · Institutional quality · Resource abundance · Policy change · Functional effect JEL Classification O11 · O13 · O53 · C21 · Q0 · Q33 1 Introduction Since reformists within the Chinese Communist Party initiated a program of economic reforms in December 1978, China has been the world’s fastest-growing major economy with consistent growth rates of around 10 % over the past thirty years. China is also the largest ˇ We are grateful to Thorsten Beck, Erwin Bulte, Pavel Cížek, Reyer Gerlagh, Harry Huizinga, Charles van Marrewijk, Daan van Soest, and seminar participants at Tilburg University for useful comments; to Ying Fang and Yang Zhao for stimulating us to investigate this topic and sharing institutional data; and to two