Abstract: The “resource curse” refers to the phenomenon that the economy of a region rich in natural resources develops more slowly than that in a resource-poor area. This phenomenon also exists in China's economic activities. And the formation of China's “resource curse” phenomenon has its own unique institutional factors. In the process of institutional transformation， China has generally implemented a double-track price system， which has， on the one hand， improved the overall economic efficiency of the country， and on the other， made the natural resource benefits transfer from resource-dependent areas to non-resource-dependent areas， forming a non-Pareto improvement. Based on the data of 254 prefecture-level cities in China in 1984 and 1986 by using the method of difference-in-difference empirical analysis， it can be found that after the implementation of the double-track price system， resource-dependent areas are losing their advantages in economy and wage growth rate over non-resource-dependent areas. This shows that the double-track price system is more favorable to the economic development of non-resource-dependent areas.

Key words: resource curse, double-track price system, economic development, resource-dependent area