Influences of land resource assets on economic growth and fluctuation in China

Abstract

The intensification of globalization has led to an increase in the attention paid to resource security, which, as one of the most important material bases for human survival and development, constitutes the key factor affecting overall resource security. Taking 104 cities in China as research objects, we built a spatial econometric model of land resource assets, economic growth, and economic fluctuation based on the calculated value and economic efficiency of various land resource assets. Our results show that each 1% increase in the abundance of land resource assets results in an increase in urban per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of 0.0089% and a decrease in the fluctuation of the value of urban per capita GDP of 0.1163%, indicating that improving the abundance of land resource assets drives local economic growth while smoothing economic fluctuation to ensure the stability of economic growth. An examination of their effects over time revealed that land resource assets promoted economic growth during 2009 and 2010 and restrained economic fluctuations during 2011 and 2012. Land resource assets were also shown to be capable of promoting economic growth in large cities and to have a weak promotional effect on economic fluctuations in large cities and the opposite effect in small cities. Several policy implications can be derived from this work, including (1) the limited nature of land resources means that local governments should actively prepare land resource balance sheets prior to land allocation and city planning, and (2) governments should work to actively break through the restrictions of land resource assets on economic fluctuations while giving full play to the role of land resource assets in promoting economic growth.