The existence of a natural resource curse has been a longstanding theme in the economic literature and in policy discussions. We propose an alternative mechanism and study its policy implications. The mechanism is based on the interaction between two building blocks: specialization in non-tradables and financial market imperfections. We show that if a country has a sufficiently large non-resour...

Can mining serve as a pathway for economic development despite the environmental externalities? The co-occurrence of poor economic performance and natural resource abundance is an empirical regularity. The extensive literature on this ‘resource curse’ phenomenon at the national level generally finds that economic dependence on point resources such as minerals is associated with lower levels of ...

This paper uses quantile regression estimation techniques so as to investigate the relationship between resource funds, governance and institutional quality by paying special attention to the distribution of the latter. The estimation results indicate that resource funds are associated with better governance and institutions. The positive correlation is identified for the entire distribution of...

introduction: it was often believed that countries with natural resource abundance would undergo the process of development with a more accelerated pace in comparison to other countries. the experimental results, however, demonstrate a higher rate of success for countries which lack the said resources. the paradoxical effects of the possession, or a lack there of, natural resources on different...

Previous research has found that regional resource dependence in Indonesia been positively associated with income growth, contrary to a ‘resource curse’. We test five potential causal mechanisms for this positive effect: spillovers manufacturing or agriculture, higher education provision, improved institutional quality and share of public spending on capital. follow 390 Indonesian districts fro...