دانش، وفور منابع طبیعی و توسعه اقتصادی: درسهایی از نیوزیلند 1861-1939

We explore the role of knowledge accumulation in the economic development of a natural resource-rich country. New estimates of commodity output and patenting are used to show New Zealand's exceptionally high incomes before 1939 rested on a knowledge-led utilization of her economic landscape. By investigating the cointegrating and causal relationships among the output of 25 industries we show that a small number of leading industries formed development blocks. In turn most leading industries were driven by knowledge growth as reflected in patent statistics. Knowledge accumulation helped to transform the farming landscape and integrate farm and factory within a New Zealand system of mass production.

A variety of natural resource abundant economies were drawn into trading relationships with the industrializing economies of north–west Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Some resource-rich economies, most obviously the USA, became industrial powers, while others, including much of south Asia and the southern cone of the Americas remained dominated by their staple exports before World War II. The disparate experiences of resource-rich economies offer a rich milieu for gauging the forces of their economic development. Endogenous growth theory places knowledge creation firmly within the economic system and highlights the importance of innovation and human capital for economic growth (Romer, 1990 and Grossman and Helpman, 1991). Yet technology's role in the development of natural resource abundant economies other than in the USA has been neglected (David and Wright, 1997 and Magee, 2000). The case of New Zealand illustrates how knowledge-related enterprise both utilized and constructed natural resource abundance to promote unusually high income per capita.

New Zealand's GDP per capita was exceptionally high by the beginning of the twentieth century and similar to that of California. The new estimates of commodity output highlight that New Zealand had higher incomes than the other western offshoots by 1900 and show that pastoral related activities contributed around two-thirds of commodity value added by 1939. However, abundant land resources did not provide New Zealand with a simple pathway to high incomes. The integration of farm and factory in a distinctive New Zealand system of mass production created its high productivity and incomes. The New Zealand system utilized and indeed manufactured land abundance by the application of new knowledge. One implication was the diminishing importance of wool and wheat farming and the rise of the meat and dairy industries associated with closer settlement, higher land productivity and the integration of farm and factory. The commodity output estimates also show that other manufacturing, most especially printing and publishing, formed an important part of the economy. In contrast, minerals became less important as the depletion of gold reserves was not fully offset by the expansion of coal.