Natural resource rents and internal conflicts: Can decentralization lift the curse?

On the Merits of the Resource Curse Theory: Resource Rents and Corruption

The Natural Resource Curse: A Survey

It is striking how often countries with oil or other natural resource wealth have failed to grow more rapidly than those without. This is the phenomenon known as the Natural Resource Curse. The principle is not confined to individual anecdotes or case studies, but has been borne out in econometric tests of the determinants of economic performance across a comprehensive sample of countries. The ...

Combating the Natural Resource Curse with Citizen Revenue Distr

In a New York Times op-ed earlier this year (April 9, 2003), Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation has proposed that Iraq establish an Alaska-style oil fund that would pay annual dividends to the citizens of Iraq.ii In Alaska, revenues from oil leases have been invested in a permanent fund, which has grown to $23.5 billion in 2002; part of the fund’s income is now distributed directly to ...

Addressing the Natural Resource Curse: An Illustration from Nigeria

The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. Start typing the Abstract here. JEL Classification Numbers: JEL no. here

Resource Rents, Redistribution, and Halving Global Poverty: The Resource Dividend

This paper considers the proposal that each country distribute its resource rents directly to citizens as a universal and unconditional cash transfer, or Resource Dividend, and estimates its potential impact on global poverty. Using a global dataset on resource rents and the distribution of income, I find that if every developing country implemented the policy then the number of people living b...