Resource Regions and the Transition to Sustainable Knowledge-based Development: Escaping the Resource Curse?

Abstract

According to the economic concept of the "resource curse", the specialization of countries and regions in the extraction of minerals can have a negative impact on their long-term economic development. The authors of the article propose, that this influence can significantly slow down the transition to development based on knowledge. The article tested this hypothesis using the dynamics of indicators of the knowledge-based economy the group of resource regions of Russia. Of the 12 resource regions of Russia, only two successfully form the knowledge-based economy - Tomsk Region and The Republic of Tatarstan. These regions had a developed education system and research infrastructure even before the discovery of oil here in the 1940s-1960s. For the rest of the resource regions, there is a large lag behind the leading regions of the knowledge economy in Russia, which does not significantly decrease during 2005-2019. At the same time, these regions did not have a developed scientific and educational base by the beginning of the active industrial development of natural resources on their territory. Thus, the formation of the knowledge-based economy in resource regions is strongly influenced by both the resource curse and path dependence effects. The absence of structural economic policies in the regions that are rich in natural resources will hinder their transition to knowledge-based development.