The “With Exhaustible Resources, Can A Developing Country Escape From the Poverty Trap?” seminar by Prof. Le Van Cuong, November 24th, 2009
Prof. Cuong Le Van returned Vietnam to chair the “Vietnam Economist Annual 2009” in Hanoi organized by DEPOCEN, Foreign Trade University, French National Center for Scientific Research, Nyenrode Business University, and the Center for Vietnamese and Southeast Asia Studies (Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City) on the 25th and 26th of November, 2009 at Foreign Trade University.
On this occasion, the Development and Policies Research Center (DEPOCEN) hosted the “With Exhaustible Resources, Can A Developing Country Escape From The Poverty Trap?” seminar by Prof. Cuong Le Van – Research Director at French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne. (Lecture handout: downloadable).
Key topics included:
1. Standard literature on growth and exhaustible resources: Dasgupta and Heal, RES 1974
2. Questions
* Can the ownership of non-renewable natural resources allow a poor country to make the transition out of a poverty trap?
* On the contrary, will the existence of the natural resource, which makes it possible to consume without producing, destroy any incentive to accumulate?
3. Properties of the optimal paths
4. To accumulate or to eat the resource stock?
5. The long term: is it possible to escape from the poverty trap?
6. Intermediate technology relative to discounting
Lecture handout: downloadable.
The participants were mainly researchers, economists from research centers, government agencies, company securities and banks in Hanoi.