Natural Resources, Technology Improvements, and Growth
研究了技术进步如何影响自然资源丰裕度与经济增长之间的关系，发现资本增强型技术进步在资源丰裕地区短期内可能产生收缩效应，长期则扩张更强劲，并用美国州和县级数据验证了该预测。
Abstract We study, analytically and empirically, how technological changes affect the nexus between resource abundance and economic growth. Our two-sector model indicates that capital-augmenting technological improvements can be contemporaneously contractionary in resource-rich economies, and expansionary elsewhere, due to differences in the size of the elasticity of substitution between labor and capital. In addition, such improvements yield relatively steeper expansionary patterns in resource-rich economies in the longer run. We test these predictions using a panel of U.S. states and counties. Our identification strategy rests on geographically-entrenched differences in resource endowments, and the adoption of plausibly exogenous technology shocks at the national level. Our core estimates corroborate our predictions. First, we document persistent differences in the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor across the natural-resource dimension. Second, we find that an increase in TFP is on impact contractionary in resource-rich states, but is non-contractionary (at worst) in resource-poor ones. Third, we illustrate that in the longer term a positive technology shock expands output and inputs in resource-rich economies relatively more strongly. Our results shed light on hitherto overlooked potential adverse effects of natural resource abundance.