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Resource-based cities play a crucial role in China's economic development. However, they are faced with the challenge of urban shrinkage due to the slowdown of economic growth in China, single industrial structure and the ‘boom and bust’ industrial cycle. To reverse the expected decline of these cities in the future, the Chinese Government has implemented active policies at national, provincial and municipal levels. This paper reviews the current planning policies and practices in resource-based cities in China from the macro perspective, and analyses how the Government engages with the pressing economic problems faced by resource-based cities, in particular, focussing on economic restructuring. To further analyse the policies from Central Government and the diversification of practices in local contexts, this paper presents two case studies, a petroleum mining city (Daqing City) and a coal mining city (Pingxiang City). Through discussion and an evaluation of general and place-based policies and practices for resource-based cities, this paper aims to enhance the understanding of shrinking cities in China and shed light on the policy-making of economic development for other resource-based cities in developing countries.

The aim of this research paper is to investigate factors and mechanisms that may facilitate the transition from coal resource-based economy to sustainability. Based on the energy technology innovation theory, factors that may influence the transition of coal resource-based economy were categorized into four types, including: innovation policy, innovation input, innovation ability, and innovation organization. Hypotheses were proposed regarding the mechanisms of these factors. Data were collected from surveys administered to 314 Chinese energy firms, and a structural equation model (SEM) was employed to test the hypotheses. Ten of fifteen hypotheses were retained based on the reliability tests, validity tests, and SEM. The results show that the four proposed factors are crucial in transforming the coal resource-based economy, and the effects become statistically significant through three intermediate variables, namely, transition of energy consumption structure, correction of resource wealth investment, and improvement of transition environment.

This paper analyzes a social planner's solution in a resource-based economy under a constant-utility criterion. The utility function includes social progress in a multiplicative form. The resulting paths of consumption include the patterns of growth that are conventionally used in the literature. A closed form solution, derived for the Dasgupta-Heal-Solow (DHS) model, includes the Solow–Hartwick result as a special case. This paper extends the link between the utilitarian criterion and the maximin for the cases with finite elasticity of marginal utility. The result also implies that economic growth in a resource-based economy may be slower than exponential; therefore, the expression for utility with social progress may become a more appropriate measure of sustainable growth than the percentage of consumption growth.

This paper analyzes the intra-day impact of the Bank of Russia’s verbal interventions on the Russian stock exchange indices in 2014-2015. With this aim, we construct the communication index, which summarizes the verbal interventions of the Bank of Russia during this period. After that, we estimate GARCH model using intraday data on the returns of RTS and MICEX indices. We also take into account the price of futures contracts on BRENT as the Russian economy has a strong dependence on oil prices. We show that the verbal interventions of the Bank of Russia have a positive short-term impact on the RTS returns, but do not affect their volatility. This results contradict previous studies, which show that usually central bank’s communication has a strong effect on the volatility of indices, but does not affect their returns. We suggest that this contradiction arises from the fact that we consider an export orientation of the economy, which has not been examined in previous studies.

In recent years economists have come to see rich natural resource endowments as a "curse" or "precious bane" that inevitably undermines development and slows economic growth. Resource-based development undeniably involves important risks. Nonetheless, the resource curse - if it exists - is at least no fatalite, as the examples of Australia, Canada and the Scandinavian countries demonstrate. This paper argues that the serious challenges posed by resource-dependence, which include an increased vulnerability to external shocks, the risk of 'Dutch disease', and the risk of developing specific institutional pathologies, can be overcome, or at least very substantially mitigated, if accompanied by the right economic policies. It then analyses in detail what these "right" economic policies are, and how to set up economic and political framework conditions to facilitate their successful implementation. The paper thereafter looks specifically at Russia as a prominent example of a resource-based economy. It investigates briefly the main drivers of Russian growth in recent years, and makes specific recommendations that would help the Russian economy to sustain high growth.

What should be the appropriate macroeconomic policy to minimize the volatility of output in a resource-based economy, i.e. in an economy that is highly dependent on export of resources with very volatile world prices? This paper examines the sources of volatility of output in Russia as compared to other countries and concludes that in 1994-2004 volatility of Russian growth rates was mostly associated with internal monetary shocks, rather than with external terms of trade shocks. In all countries that export resources with highly volatile prices, like Russia, volatility of economic growth is associated with volatility of RER, which in turn is mostly caused by the inability to accumulate enough foreign exchange reserves (FOREX) in central bank accounts and in stabilization funds (SF). However, in Russia, volatility of RER and GDP growth rates in recent 10 years was associated not so much with objective circumstances (terms of trade – TT – shocks), but with poor macroeconomic policies – despite intuition, volatility of real exchange rate (RER) was caused mostly by internal monetary shocks rather than by external terms of trade shocks. It is argued that the good (minimizing volatility) macroeconomic policy for Russia would be (1) not to generate monetary shocks (2) to cope with inevitable external shocks via changes in FOREX and SF, while keeping the RER stable.