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This chapter examines the relationship between political economy and natural resource endowment using an extension of Lal’s (1995) typology of political states. The extended typology explains why the governments of resource-abundant countries are less likely to align their interests with those of the majority than the governments of resource-deficient countries. Natural resource rents feed conflicts so that the resource-abundant country has a factional or predatory government that relaxes market discipline in capturing and redistributing the rents. Thus, the economy is deflected from its comparative advantage and cumulates economic distortions that retard growth and/or cause the economy to depend on a weakening primary sector.

This chapter explains a theory of institutional innovation, in which shifts in the demand for institutional innovation are induced by changes in relative resource endowments and technical change. It considers the impact of advances in social science knowledge and of cultural endowments on the supply of institutional change and examines the forces that act to shift the demand and supply of institutional innovation. The chapter concludes with a description of the elements of a general model of institutional change.

In this chapter, we focus on the rise of the United States as a two-stage process. In the first stage the United States acquired dominance in mass-production industries that were contingent on not only technological innovation but also an unusually rich resource endowment and an equally distinctive domestic market. U.S. economic growth emulated Britain’s coal-centric trajectory and outdid it by the end of the nineteenth century. As electricity and petroleum began to be utilized in the latter part of the nineteenth century, they reshaped the nature of American industry, heating, and transportation, pushing the nation ahead of the rest of the world. Technological innovation and power-driven machinery increasingly provided the intermittent stimuli needed for the United States to fully embrace carbon-based energy sources that initially were relatively inexpensive. At the same time the large domestic market made increases in the scale of production possible, and the nature of United States’ resource endowment ensured that raw materials were inexpensive. The combination of innovation, cheap raw materials (including energy), and a very large domestic market pushed the United States into an economic leadership position by World War I. But the second stage of the process, the rise to world technological leadership, did not begin until after World War II because it was based on science, and it took longer for the United States to acquire the lead in scientific research. Centrality in technology innovation, science, and world economic growth followed.

This chapter begins by outlining the characteristics of resource endowments, agrarian structures, growth in aggregate agricultural output, and changes in the shares of major export commodities in world markets in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand. This is followed by a review of the process of vent-for-surplus development in Southeast Asia from the late 19th to early 20th century, emphasizing the critical roles of major river deltas in the continental zone of Southeast Asia and tropical rain forests in the insular zone. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how governments forged policy choices in terms of the structure of political economy under unique ecological conditions and historical trajectories.

Land Resources are resource endowments for economic development in order to improve the quality of life and living condition of the people over time. The present survey of research on land resources attempts a review of papers dealing with application of landform studies in socio-economic development. Study of landforms is essential for better land use, land capability, land evaluation, land development and land management. In the present study major characteristics of physical attributes of land and land based resources have been attempted, reviewing the processes of land degradation and desertification, landslides, coastal processes, glacial features and climate change and role of landforms in urban development and natural hazard zonation. The rapidly growing studies on land resources have undergone a rapid change in content, methodology and approach to the study of landforms and their application in social and economic spheres. It has been observed that depletion of land resources is the greatest challenge in this century. Pressure on land is rapidly increasing due to increasing population for finite land resources.

Variation in automotive industrial performance across seven East Asian countries reflects differences in firm competencies, but those differences are largely cross-national: common national environments are central influences on firms’ incentives to develop competencies. Factors emphasized in neoclassical accounts, such as market size, macroeconomic policy, and openness to foreign investment, are weak predictors of cross-national variation. Extensive development requires measures that facilitate capital mobilization and allocation, such as sector-specific FDI incentives and specialized infrastructure. Successful intensive growth cases are distinguished by effective sectoral institutes for collective training, testing, and research. Three sets of pressures push political leaders to pursue the long-term development of institutions: claims on resources (security threats and domestic pressures for welfare improvement) in the absence of easily accessible resources to satisfy such needs. These arguments are consistent with but go well beyond other prominent approaches to development: national innovation systems, global value chains, and developmental states.

Discussion in this chapter is on the recent models of water supply surveillance for urban areas tested in developed countries. They have significant shortcomings if applied in developing country contexts. The water supply systems often comprise a complex mixture of formal and informal services for both the ‘served’ and ‘un-served’. This chapter discusses the development of a town-level WATSAN vulnerability index, which can assist a utility in targeting water supply and sanitation interventions into those towns and cities where public health gains are likely to be greatest. The present tool is very relevant for countries like India where water supply systems are not fully formalized; and major variations in resource endowment, climate, population density, water quality, water price charged by utilities, institutional capacity and management styles and governance practices exist.

The US economy emulated and improved on the British model by first adapting its coal reserves to steam engines and then developing petroleum and electricity as additional sources of industrial fuel. Its considerable lead on other states was thus a combination of resource endowment and technological creativity that radically altered the way modern economies function. Size, location, and resource endowment are often noted as causal factors in America’s ascent. After 1945, though, there was little doubt that the US economy was the world’s most advanced center of high technology and manufacturing production. It also emerged in 1945 as the leading political-military actor and the head of a coalition of the most economically advanced states in the world system. World War II alone did not elevate the United States to systemic leadership, but the systemic leadership mantle would not have passed to the United States in the absence of this global war.