Damping Effects of Water and Land Resources on Economic Growth in Beijing
北京市水土资源对经济增长的阻尼效应研究

By learning from the research method of "growth damping", domestic scholars believe that China's economic growth rate declines by 1.45% per year due to land and water resources limits. However, the calculated damping coefficient is not realistic because of the shortcomings of model and data selection as well as the ignorance of the substitution relation among input factors, Therefore, based on the analysis of the inadequate previous studies on the damping effect of resources, this paper has calculated and analyzed the damping coefficient of water and land resources in Beijing. The results show that: 1) The damping coefficient of water and land resources fluctuates with economic growth. Because of Beijing's upgrading of industrial structure and intensive use of resources, the damping effect of water resources has began to decrease gradually since 2002; 2) The damping effect of land resources eased during the period of 1998-2008, but it began to fluctuate with economic growth after 2008. That is to say, land resource will be the primary constraint for Beijing's economic growth in the future. After intensive study, we obtain that as technological advances have played the factor substitution effect, the resource constraints can be eased in a short term. But in order to solve the problem ultimately, we must rely on both factor substitution and industrial restructuring. In addition, for regions which suffer resource shortage, only the use of external resources through market mechanism is an effective way to deal with resource constraints.