The Role of Natural Resources in Economic Development

By Edward B. Barbier. 2003

221 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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?

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/161e51ab88a013f545781f16c442d6b17ef97e5d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

1. S. Monni
2. V. Costantini
3. G. Ding
4. S. Gürlük
5. Anis Omri
6. Sabrine Dhahri
7. Nikos Benos
8. Stefania Zotou

In Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

1. S. Monni
2. V. Costantini
3. G. Ding
4. Wing S. Chow
5. Yang Chen

Citations in the corpus

• Developing a multicriteria approach for the measurement of sustainable performance (2005, background): “This is very important today, as the supply of natural resources is under serious threat (Winpenny, 1991; Gregory et al., 1993; Barbier, 2003).”
• Environment, Human Development and Economic Growth (2008, background): “…economies and on the supply side, the role of structural changes in the economic system where economic growth is followed by technological innovation and change in the productive structure (from basic industries to high-tech services) producing a reduction in polluting emissions (Barbier, 2003).”