The Role of Natural Resources in Economic Development

Economists now recognize that, along with physical and human capital, environmental resources should be viewed as important economic assets, which can be called natural capital. Three recent debates have emerged over the role of natural capital in economic development. First, as many ecological services are unique, does the environment have an “essential” role in sustaining human welfare, and if so, are special “compensation rules” required to ensure that future welfare is not worsened by natural capital depletion today? Second, the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis has fostered empirical estimations of an “inverted U” shaped relationship between a variety of indicators of environmental pollution or resource depletion and the level of per capita income. Does the existence of such EKC relationships suggest that environmental degradation will eventually decline with growth? Finally, recent economic theories and empirical evidence have questioned whether lower income economies that are endowed with abundant natural resources develop more rapidly than economies that are relatively resource poor. Is it possible that resource abundant economies are not reinvesting the rents generated from natural resource exploitation into productive assets, or that resource booms actually divert economic resources from more productive and innovative sectors?     

Social capital and social economics

The “discovery” of social capital in the early 1990s led to an upsurge of research into the economic impact of social cohesion and governmental effectiveness. This paper outlines key developments in the social capital literature over the past 13 years. It then examines theory and evidence of the links between social cohesion, quality of governance, economic performance and human welfare. The literature indicates that social capital makes a measurable contribution to economic development and overall wellbeing, particularly in developing countries. Partly in response to this emerging body of evidence, there has been increased interest in the application of community development principles to economic development initiatives. This paper argues that the advent of social capital theory represents a partial convergence between social economics and mainstream economics, and signifies an increased acceptance that economic activity cannot be meaningfully “disembedded” from social and political context.     

Governance and Timber Harvests

Resource economics theory implies that risks associated with weak governance have an ambiguous impact on extraction, with the net impact depending on the relative strengths of depletion and investment effects. Previous empirical studies have found that improved governance tends to reduce deforestation but to raise oil production. Here, we present evidence that the marginal impact of improved governance on timber harvests in developing countries during 1984–2006 was nonmonotonic. It tended to raise harvests in countries with weaker governance but to reduce harvests in countries with stronger governance. This nonmonotonic impact occurred for both an index of governmental integrity (corruption, bureaucracy quality, law and order) and an index of governmental stability. A simulation of hypothetical increases in these governance indices to the maximum 2006 values observed in the sample predicted that improved governance would reduce harvests in most countries but could raise harvests in some, with large increases occurring in countries with the weakest governance.     

External debt and economic reform: does a pain reliever delay the necessary treatment?

Recent literature argues that conflict in shifting adjustment costs between different socioeconomic groups delays necessary reforms and finds that such reforms often follow economic crises. This paper expands these models by including external borrowing by the private sector and shows that this may lead to a further delay in economic reform. Empirical evidence based on a large panel of developing and emerging economies supports this argument and shows that the result is slower economic growth. External financing sometimes acts like a “pain reliever”, postponing the much needed “treatment” of a “sick” economy by reform.     

Urbanization with and without industrialization

We document a strong positive relationship between natural resource exports and urbanization in a sample of 116 developing nations over the period 1960–2010. In countries that are heavily dependent on resource exports, urbanization appears to be concentrated in “consumption cities” where the economies consist primarily of non-tradable services. These contrast with “production cities” that are more dependent on manufacturing in countries that have industrialized. Consumption cities in resource exporters also appear to perform worse along several measures of welfare. We offer a simple model of structural change that can explain the observed patterns of urbanization and the associated differences in city types. We note that although the development literature often assumes that urbanization is synonymous with industrialization, patterns differ markedly across developing countries. We discuss several possible implications for policy.     

Economic growth and poverty traps in sub-Saharan Africa: The role of education and TFP shocks

This paper investigates the “education-total factor productivity trade-off” in explaining income per worker differences between sub-Saharan (unlucky) and G7 (lucky) economies. First, we examine the dynamics of average years of schooling (i.e. education), capital per worker, income per worker, and total factor productivity (TFP) across sub-Saharan and G7 countries. We confirm that physical capital and education levels partially explain income per worker differences between lucky and unlucky economies. Second, we undertake a novel examination of the impact of technology shocks on income per worker, with the goal of understanding the role of technology variation in causing cross-country income per worker differences, and as a potential contributor to overall slow growth in the sub-Saharan region. In a vector autoregressive (VAR) framework, we show that the impact of “ad hoc” TFP shocks on income per worker is larger in unlucky economies than in lucky ones. We observe that average TFP volatility in the “unlucky world” is eight times higher than in the “G7 world”. We argue that the order of magnitude of the impact heavily depends on the level of the TFP volatility. Last, we suggest that the documented differences in the amount of physical capital and in the productivity of human capital between these two regions add conceptual support for the existence of poverty traps for sub-Saharan Africa.     

Piecemeal Reforms in a Transitional Economy

Many transitional as well as developing economies have retained large elements of state ownership in some sectors. This paper analyzes the effects of piecemeal reforms in a small open economy in which the state enterprises’ employment and output decisions are the result of bargaining between the state treasury and enterprise “insiders.” Competition policy enhances welfare; privatization in a sector protected from foreign competition increases (lowers) welfare if state enterprises care more (less) for wage raises than for employment increases; and a small increase in the import quota has the usual welfare-ambiguous effects. A free-trade policy maximizes national welfare.     

Frontiers and sustainable economic development

Exploiting new resource “frontiers,” such as agricultural land and mineral reserves, is a fundamental feature of economic development in poor economies. Yet frontier-based development is symptomatic of a pattern of economy-wide resource exploitation in developing economies that: (a) generates little additional economic rents, and (b) what rents are generated are not being reinvested in other sectors. Such development is inherently unsustainable. The following paper explains this phenomenon, and provides evidence that long-run expansion of agricultural land and oil and natural gas proved reserves across poor economies is associated with lower levels of real income per capita. The paper proposes a frontier expansion hypothesis to explain why the structural economic dependence of these economies on frontier land expansion and resource exploitation is not conducive to sustained long-run growth. The key to sustainable economic development in poor economies will be improving the economic integration between frontier and other sectors of the economy, targeting policies to improved resource management in frontier areas and overcoming problems of corruption and rent-seeking in resource sectors.      

MACROECONOMIC POLICY AND ELECTIONS IN OECD DEMOCRACIES*

The purpose of this paper is to test for evidence of opportunistic “political business cycles” in a large sample of 18 OECD economies. Our results can be summarized as follows: 1) We find very little evidence of pre-electoral effects on economic outcomes, in particular, on GDP growth and unemployment; 2) We see some evidence of “political monetary cycles,” that is, expansionary monetary policy in election years; 3) We also observe indications of “political budget cycles,” or “loose” fiscal policy prior to elections; 4) Inflation exhibits a post-electoral jump, which could be explained by either the pre-electoral “loose” monetary and fiscal policies and/or by an opportunistic timing of increases in publicly controlled prices, or indirect taxes.     

Forging new relationships: Social capital in the transistion

A theory of transitional economies is now emerging, much of which is evolutionary-institutional in nature and hence very critical of the naïveté of socalled shock therapy and the economic reasoning that supported it. Indeed it has become apparent that changing the formal rules of the game, difficult as this may be, is far from sufficient. The informal rules of the game, the customs and norms of the social order, are critical to the operation of the economy. These informal rules are often implicit or tacit, and therefore very difficult to reach on a policy level. This paper seeks to apply the concept of social capital to the transitional economic process using the former Soviet republic of Russia to draw attention to the complex issues of governance and legitimacy that are too often neglected in economic discourse.     

Unsustainable timber harvesting, deforestation and the role of certification

Deforestation is a major environmental issue, while demand for timber products increases rapidly in the developing world. One can thus wonder whether forest harvesting is sustainable worldwide, or if demand for timber products is fulfilled with the products from deforestation. Our panel data analysis shows that countries where timber harvesting is more important tend to experience larger deforestation rates than others, giving the intuition that forest harvesting is generally not sustainable. We also show that timber certification is negatively related to deforestation and thus seems to be a good indicator of harvesting sustainability.     

The curse of natural resources

This paper summarizes and extends previous research that has shown evidence of a “curse of natural resources” – countries with great natural resource wealth tend nevertheless to grow more slowly than resource-poor countries. This result is not easily explained by other variables, or by alternative ways to measure resource abundance. This paper shows that there is little direct evidence that omitted geographical or climate variables explain the curse, or that there is a bias resulting from some other unobserved growth deterrent. Resource-abundant countries tended to be high-price economies and, perhaps as a consequence, these countries tended to miss-out on export-led growth.     

Conditions for Sustainable Optimal Economic Development

This paper shows that, for dynamic optimizing economies with different types of natural resource, environmental, and human‐made capital stocks, a necessary and sufficient condition for permanently sustaining an optimal utility/consumption level is the stationarity of the current‐value Hamiltonian. For economies whose development is not exogenously and directly affected by time (i.e., time‐autonomous economies), this stationarity condition generalizes Dixit et al.’s (1980 ) “zero‐net‐aggregate‐investment” rule of sustain‐ability, which in turn generalizes Solow‐Hartwick’s sustainability rule. For non‐autonomous economies, the stationarity condition is not generally fulfilled, and the current‐value Hamiltonian under (over) estimates the true welfare level by an amount equal to the discounted value of the net “pure time effect.” For the non‐autonomous case of a time‐dependent utility discount rate, a general condition on the discount rate function (of which the hyperbolic discount rate function is a special case) upholds the results obtained for autonomous cases. The paper concludes with a discussion of policies that promote both optimality and sustainability objectives.     

新兴经济体国家城镇化发展对碳排放影响的比较研究

新兴经济体十六国是重要的发展集团,由“金砖五国”和“新钻十一国”组成,高效低碳的城镇化是其进一步提升在全球经济发展中增量贡献的动力保障。借助EKC模型和STIRPAT模型,分别研究这两个国家集团城镇化发展与碳排放量之间的关系以及城镇化对碳排放的影响。研究结果表明:在二者的关系方面,新兴经济体国家的城镇化水平与碳排放量呈现出微弱的倒“U”型关系,其中,“金砖五国”已经跨过倒“U”型曲线的拐点,而“新钻十一国”则处于拐点前期;在城镇化对碳排放的影响方面,城镇化发展对“新钻十一国”碳排放量的影响大于“金砖五国”;城镇化水平越高的国家,碳排放量越大,但随着工业化水平的提升和产业结构的优化升级,碳排放量逐步降低。     

On wage- and profit-led demand regimes: learning from the evidence

Abstract

This paper contributes to the empirical research around the “wage-led” or “profit-led” demand regimes. It first reviews how Kalecki, and then Steindl, approached the relationship between economic growth and income distribution. Then, empirical analysis carried out under the probabilistic approach to econometric modeling shows statistical evidence, estimated through cointegration analysis, that in the long run, in three very open economies—Mexico, France, and Korea—the wage share is positively associated with demand and output. It finally discusses the macroeconomic dilemma that almost all countries have to face, i.e., a positive effect of a high-wage policy on demand and employment may diverge from a negative effect on output compatible with external equilibrium.     

司马迁的因俗以治思想及其现实镜鉴?

作为一种非正式制度,习俗在国家的社会经济发展和治理中起着非常重要的作用,在我国的古代社会尤其如此。司马迁较早注意到了俗与治的内在关联,但学术界忽视了其在司马迁经济思想中的重要地位。文章对司马迁的经济思想谱系中“俗”与“治”两大重要范畴进行了关联阐述,介绍了司马迁“因俗以治”治道思想的源流和主张,并结合现代经济学理论对其进行延伸与扩展,探讨其现实意义。研究发现：(1)司马迁的治道思想兼容了道家与儒家的无为而治思想的不同侧面,而其“善因论”的要义正在于“俗之所欲,因而予之”。(2)因俗以治的核心是因循人“生有欲”和“皆为利”的本性及民间习俗来因地制宜、因时制宜地立俗施事,以达至“事少而功多”的理想治理效果。(3)由于司马迁的经济思想带有浓厚的经验色彩和朴素性质,而且中国古代社会缺乏良好的市场环境,因此其在近代以前始终未得到重视和采纳。(4)司马迁“因俗以治”思想给现代国家治理带来了众多启示：一是要尊重风俗习惯并加以因势利导;二是要注重习俗等非正式制度与正式制度的兼容;三是要让好的习俗成为一种稳态均衡而固定下来并延续下去。文章不仅是对司马迁经济思想研究的丰富和拓展,而且对中国国家治理能力的提升也提供了有益的历史借鉴。     

RESOURCE CURSE,POLITICAL ENTRY,AND DEADWEIGHT COSTS

A simple model of political entry in a two‐sector economy is developed to analyze the effects of natural resource wealth on economic policy, political development, and civil insurrection. The model emphasizes the role of political entry and deadweight costs of taxation on the joint determination of these economic and political outcomes. Contrary to popular belief, my model shows that natural resource abundance is an economic blessing even in a rent‐seeking society, although resource dependence can be negatively associated with economic performance. In a contested political market, dictators care about popular support and hence resource wealth can help reduce the deadweight cost of taxation (and hence the cost of public good provision). On the other hand, natural resource wealth can be a political curse, because it encourages political entry and hence it induces incumbent dictators to run more repressive regimes. With constant returns counterinsurgent technology, however, the equilibrium number of insurgents is independent of the size of resource wealth. The onset of civil war, therefore, depends on the counterinsurgent technology and whether the costs of entry deterrence are affected by resource wealth. This helps clarify the two seemingly contradictory hypotheses that “resource wealth enhances regime durability” and “resource wealth fuels conflict.”     

The curse of natural resources in the transition economies*

The curse of natural resources is a well‐documented phenomenon for developing countries. Economies that are richly endowed with natural resources tend to grow slowly. Among the transition economies of the former ‘Eastern Bloc’, a similar pattern can be observed. This paper shows that a large part of the variation in growth rates among the transition economies can be attributed to the curse of natural resources. After controlling for numerous other factors, there is still a strong negative correlation between natural resource abundance and economic growth. Among the transition economies the prime reasons for the curse of natural resources were corruption and a neglect of basic education. In order to overcome the curse of natural resources and move to a sustainable path of development, the resource abundant transition countries should fight corruption and ensure that their resource revenues are invested in human capital or the preservation of natural capital.     

COMPETITION VS. FRANCHISE MONOPOLY IN CABLE TELEVISION

A modern defense of public utility regulation has arisen from the “transactions costs” literature. Traditional economic theorists called for government to establish regulated, franchise monopolies to guard against over-investment and wasteful duplication in natural monopoly (i.e., cost subadditive) markets. However, the new view is that monopoly licenses are issued to promote investment into markets where suppliers must sink considerable sums of specific…nonsalvageable…capital. Consumers, in this scenario, “delegate” their choice-making to political or bureaucratic agents, who administer day-to-day and year-to-year arrangements with a monopoly producer in a long-term exclusive-dealing arrangement. This may be a plausible explanation for the issuance of legal monopoly rights. But the troubling question regarding the public agency is: why should self-interested political agents create proconsumer regulatory contracts? They might instead be expected to maximize political clout by erecting monopolistic restrictions and directing excess returns to effective distributional coalitions. These competing explanations for the political issuance of monopoly franchises are contrasted in this paper through the use of legal and economic evidence in the cable television industry.     

The Washington Consensus revisited: a new structural economics perspective

The Washington Consensus reform resulted in economic collapse and stagnation in many transition economies and “lost decades” in other developing countries in 1980s and 1990s. The paper provides a new structural economics perspective of such failures. The Washington Consensus reform failed to recognize that many firms in a transition economy were not viable in an open, competitive market because those industries went against the comparative advantages determined by the economy’s endowment structure. Their survival relied on the government’s protections and subsidies through various interventions and distortions. The Washington Consensus advised the government to focus their reforms on issues related to property rights, corporate governance, government interventions, and other issues that may obstruct a firm’s normal management. Without resolving the firms’ viability problem, such reforms led to the firms’ collapse and an unintended decline and stagnation of the economy in the transition process. This paper suggests that the viability assumption in neoclassical economics be relaxed when analyzing development and transition issues in socialist, transition, and developing economies.