Abstract
Existing studies have suggested that rich mineral resources may serve as a “resource curse” as well as a “resource blessing” with respect to regional economic development. However, the reason behind the emergence of this paradox is not clear. In this paper, we carried out an investigation of the sustainable development of oil and gas industry clusters in eight provinces of China. We studied the panel data of these industry clusters and performed quantitative analysis. By considering the effects of the technical innovation ability of the cluster on its long-term development, we showed that increasing the technical innovation ability of the cluster promoted the development of the industry, which led to a “resource blessing” situation. On the other hand, a mineral resource-based industry cluster may not survive long without technological innovation. Increasing investments in scientific research and technology development and reducing the reckless expansion of the industry cluster may lower the possibility of the occurrence of a “resource curse”.
Highlights
It has generally been believed that rich natural resources have a significant influence on the development of regional economies
(2) For oil and gas industry clusters with relatively short development periods, though there is a relative abundance of resources, in order to avoid falling into the “resource curse” dilemma, more attention should be paid to technological progress to realize sustainable development rather than improving technical efficiency
In order to sort out the major factors affecting the technological innovation capability of the oil and gas industry clusters and identify the specific impacts of these factors, we combined previous studies and relevant research literature to introduce the following explanatory variables to measure their influences on the variables to be explained, such as total factor productivity (TFP), technological progress index (TP), and technical efficiency index (TE), and the degree of impact [7,8,11,14,32,33,34,35,36]
Summary
It has generally been believed that rich natural resources have a significant influence on the development of regional economies. Some traditional industries in the region will lose competitiveness and be eliminated [8] In such an industrial development pattern, once the resources in the region are depleted, the resource-based industries will stagnate, which is evidence of the “resource curse” in the regional economy. Such problems have attracted the attention of scholars, and research has been performed to examine the mechanisms behind this phenomenon. Some scholars have studied the evolution of the technological innovation ability in the clusters with respect to technical specificity, technological innovation opportunities, and technological accumulation with the aim of reducing uncertainty to avoid such dependence and promote the sustainable development of the clusters [16,23]. We show which factors promote technological innovation ability and lead to the sustainable development of the cluster
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