The curse of natural resources in the transition economies*

The curse of natural resources is a well‐documented phenomenon for developing countries. Economies that are richly endowed with natural resources tend to grow slowly. Among the transition economies of the former ‘Eastern Bloc’, a similar pattern can be observed. This paper shows that a large part of the variation in growth rates among the transition economies can be attributed to the curse of natural resources. After controlling for numerous other factors, there is still a strong negative correlation between natural resource abundance and economic growth. Among the transition economies the prime reasons for the curse of natural resources were corruption and a neglect of basic education. In order to overcome the curse of natural resources and move to a sustainable path of development, the resource abundant transition countries should fight corruption and ensure that their resource revenues are invested in human capital or the preservation of natural capital.     

“资源诅咒”的实证分析及破解

自然禀赋与一些国家或地区的经济增长之间存在显著的负相关关系,由此形成所谓的"资源诅咒"效应.从中心一外围论、贸易条件恶化论、荷兰病到资源诅咒等也均揭示出资源禀赋与经济发展之间的悖论.以此现实问题为背景,深入讨论了资源诅咒的成因及破解途径.     

Regime types,ideological leanings,and the natural resource curse

While many consider institutional quality as a central explanatory variable when finding what causes the variance in per capita GDP growth performance of resource-abundant countries, this paper attempts to focus on more structural factors: regime type and its ideological approaches to economic policy. Several joint effects of natural resource abundance and regime type on growth are found. The natural resource curse is likely to be more severe in authoritarian regimes than democratic regimes. Among democracies, it is found that the natural resource curse is more salient in presidential regimes than in parliamentary regimes. This paper also suggests that the natural resource curse is more likely when a certain type of democratic regime coincides with a particular ideological orientation of the regime with respect to economic policy. Presidential democracies with left-wing economic policy are found to be least growth enhancing among the combinations between regime type and its economic ideology offered, given similar levels of natural resource abundance.     

Transmission channels of the resource curse in Africa: A time perspective

Most sub-Saharan African countries share the following characteristics: a strong dependence on natural resources, weak institutions, and relatively low growth levels preventing them to catch up with the rest of the developing world. This paper aims to unfold the natural resource curse by introducing a time perspective: long-term versus short-term effects. Following the two-step Engle and Granger procedure, an error-correction model is performed after a cointegration estimation. In addition, the paper clusters the countries to differentiate the natural resource curse mechanisms by level of institutional quality. Results are three-fold. On the long run, the negative impact of the dependence is confirmed for all categories. Countries with weak institutions are more vulnerable to the curse because the resource dependence not only negatively impacts long-term growth but also adversely impacts the recovery process. Finally, in a strong institutional environment, results point towards a potential positive impact of natural resources during recovery process.     

Resource Curse: New Evidence on the Role of Institutions

This paper attempts to provide a probable answer to a longstanding resource curse puzzle; i.e., why resource-rich nations grow at a slower rate compared with less fortunate ones. Using an innovative threshold estimation technique, the empirical results reveal that there is a threshold effect in the natural resources–economic growth relationship. We find that the impact of natural resources is meaningful to economic growth only after a certain threshold point of institutional quality has been attained. The results also shed light on the fact that the nations that have low institutional quality depend heavily on natural resources while countries with high quality institutions are relatively less dependent on natural resources to generate growth.     

“资源诅咒”悖论国外实证研究的最新进展及其争论

许多文献证明,自然资源缺乏的国家往往依靠技术和制度创新,实现了更快的经济增长,而自然资源丰裕的国家却容易陷入资源依赖型增长陷阱,经济学家用资源诅咒来描述这一经济增长中的悖论。资源诅咒的出现激起了学者们的广泛研究兴趣,产生了大量实证研究成果。本文将从荷兰病、制度和暴力冲突三个维度,对资源诅咒的国外最新实证文献进行系统梳理,并对目前学术界存在的争论进行述评。     

Examining the effect of IMF conditionality on natural resource policy

Can International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending improve natural resource governance in borrowing countries? While most IMF agreements mandate policy reforms in exchange for financial support, compliance with these reforms is mixed at best. The natural resource sector should be no exception. After all, resource windfalls enable short-term increases in discretionary spending, and office-seeking politicians are often unwilling to forgo this discretion by reforming the oil, gas, or mining sector. I investigate how and when borrowers go against their political interests and establish natural resource funds—a tool often promoted by the IMF—in the wake of a loan agreement. Using text analysis, statistical models, and qualitative evidence from natural resource policy and IMF conditionality for 74 countries between 1980 and 2019, I show that borrowers under an IMF agreement are more likely to create or regulate a resource fund, particularly if the agreement includes binding conditions that highlight the salience of natural resource reforms. This study contributes to extant research by proposing a new method to extract information from IMF conditions, by introducing a novel dataset on country-level natural resource policy, and by identifying under what circumstances international reform efforts can help combat the resource curse.     

自然资源禀赋与经济增长：资源诅咒还是资源福音?--基于劳动力结构的一个理论与实证分析框架

文章构建了一个包含自然资源存量和劳动力结构因素的经济增长理论模型,探索劳动力结构是否是引起“资源诅咒”或“资源福音”的一个原因。理论研究发现,在不同限制条件下,自然资源开发部门劳动力数量的增加对经济增长的作用不同,而劳动者素质的提高对缓解“资源诅咒”效应而言始终是一个有利因素。实证研究进一步表明：从总体上讲,我国省域层面的“资源诅咒”现象是存在的,但在一定条件下并非没有逆转的可能,避免“资源诅咒”问题的发生,使丰裕的自然资源成为地区发展的“福音”,关键在于劳动者素质的提高,因为资源开发部门劳动力数量的增加所起的作用有限;分地区讲,“资源诅咒”效应在经济发展水平不同的地区存在差异,而劳动力结构的异质性主导着这种差异。     

Resource Curse or Not: A Question of Appropriability*

Whether natural resources are good or bad for a country's development are shown to depend on the interaction between institutional setting and, crucially, the types of resources possessed by the country. Some natural resources are, for economical and technical reasons, more likely to cause problems such as rent‐seeking and conflicts than others. This potential problem can, however, be countered by good institutional quality. In contrast to the traditional resource curse hypothesis, we show the impact of natural resources on economic growth to be non‐monotonic in institutional quality, and increasingly so for certain types of resources. In particular, countries rich in minerals are cursed only if they have low‐quality institutions, while the curse is reversed if institutions are sufficiently good. Furthermore, if countries are rich in diamonds and precious metals, these effects—both positive and negative—are larger.     

Do Natural Resources Depress Income Per Capita?

Most evidence for the resource curse comes from cross‐country growth regressions suffers from bias originating from the high and ever‐evolving volatility in commodity prices. These issues are addressed by providing new cross‐country empirical evidence for the effect of resources in income per capita. Natural resource dependence (resource exports) has a significant negative effect on income per capita, especially in countries with bad rule of law or bad policies, but these results weaken substantially once we allow for endogeneity. However, the more exogenous measure of resource abundance (stock of natural capital) has a significant negative effect on income per capita even after controlling for geography, rule of law and de facto or de jure trade openness. Furthermore, this effect is more severe for countries that have little de jure trade openness. These results are robust to using alternative measures of institutional quality (expropriation and corruption instead of rule of law).     

Constitutions and the resource curse

Utilizing the fact that natural resources are randomly distributed among countries, we investigate how public income shocks have different long run economic effects dependent on constitutional arrangements. We find that (i) the so-called ‘resource curse’ is present in democratic presidential countries—but not in democratic parliamentary countries, (ii) being parliamentary or presidential matters more for the growth effects of natural resources than being democratic or autocratic, and (iii) natural resources are more likely to reduce growth when proportional electoral systems are in place than when the electoral systems are majoritarian. The two first effects appear very robust, the last effect less so.     

Do resource dependent regions grow slower than they should?

A large literature documents a negative correlation between income growth and resource dependence. This correlation has been named the resource curse. We present evidence that suggests that the resource curse can be explained by a slow growing resource sector.     

China's Economic Influence in Latin America

After decades of low‐level commercial interaction, China and Latin America significantly ramped up their economic relationship in the 2000s. China has jumped to first place as an export destination for many countries, and it is a major source of imports for all countries in the Latin America/Caribbean region. While not a major source of foreign direct investment overall, China has built a strong investment presence in certain countries, particularly in the natural resource and infrastructure sectors. China's influence in Latin America has presented a great opportunity for many countries, but it has also brought new risks. Three main challenges face the region: how to mitigate the impacts of increased commodity concentration as a result of China's strong demand for natural resources; how to avoid other natural resource curse effects; and how to manage the tapering of this growth. Latin American countries' relationships with China vary widely, so there is no single, coordinated regional response.     

The curse of natural resources: An empirical investigation of U.S. counties

Research consistently shows that natural resource dependence tends to be associated with lower economic growth. However, the studies typically focus on differences across nations or states. We fill a gap in the literature by testing the so-called resource curse at a more disaggregated county level. Our results show clear evidence that resource-dependent counties exhibit more anemic economic growth, even after controlling for state-specific effects, socio-demographic differences, initial income, and spatial correlation. A case study analysis of Maine and Wyoming, and the counties within, highlight the growth effects of specializing in natural resource extraction.     

Natural Resource Dependence and Economic Performance in the 1970–2000 Period

We look at the type of natural resource dependence and growth in developing countries. Certain natural resources called point‐source, such as oil and minerals, exhibit concentrated and capturable revenue patterns, while revenue flows from resources such as agriculture are more diffused. Developing countries that export the former type of products are regarded prone to growth failure due to institutional failure. We present an explicit model of growth collapse with micro‐foundations in rent‐seeking contests with increasing returns. Our econometric analysis is among the few in this literature with a panel data dimension. Point‐source‐type natural resource dependence does retard institutional development in both governance and democracy, which hampers growth. The resource curse, however, is more general and not simply confined to mineral exporters.     

资源诅咒传导机制的研究述评

资源诅咒是开发自然资源引起的一系列经济、社会问题的统称,比如经济增长缓慢、贸易保护、教育投资不足、物质资本积累下降、创新不足、不平等、寻租、腐败、体制不健全、内战等问题。因其明显的政策含义,资源诅咒传导机制成为研究的重点。本文以经济增长源泉为线索,区分经济学和政治学,从理论和实证两方面给出资源诅咒传导机制的全面说明,以帮助找出我国资源诅咒的关键因素,制定相应政策提高资源开发绩效。     

Oil,Growth, and Health: What Does the Cross‐Country Evidence Really Show?*

We show that previous results from the body of literature on the resource curse have primarily been driven by the collapse in oil prices during the mid‐1980s. By exploiting cross‐country variations in the size of initial oil endowments and the timing of oil discoveries, we find that there is a stable positive relationship between oil abundance and long‐run economic growth. Using dynamic panel data methods, we also find that there is no evidence that higher oil rents hinder growth. However, to focus on material gain means that the welfare gain from oil is understated, because oil‐rich countries benefit more by the reduction in infant mortality and the gain in longevity. Interestingly, such oil‐led health improvements are more pronounced in non‐democratic countries, where initial heath conditions were poor and oil wealth is concentrated among the ruling elites.     

自然资源丰裕程度与经济发展水平关系的研究

“资源的诅咒”是经济学中的一个经典假说,但这一命题在一国内部不同地区是否成立尚缺乏验证。本文以中国的省际面板数据为样本,对这一假说进行了实证检验。计量结果显示,该命题在我国内部的地区层面同样成立,多数省份丰裕的自然资源并未成为经济发展的有利条件,反而制约了经济增长。自然资源的丰裕以及对这种资源的依赖,主要是通过资本投入的转移机制制约了经济增长,劳动投入的转移机制也存在这种效应,但不如前者显著。本文选择山西为典型省份,进一步揭示“资源的诅咒”的作用机制。结果表明,密集而过度的资源开采引致的制造业衰退和制度弱化是制约经济增长的主要原因。     

The curse of natural resources in fractionalized countries

This paper develops a model that can explain why natural resources are a blessing for some countries, but a curse for others. In this model, natural resources cause fighting activities between rivalling groups. Fighting reduces productive activities and weakens property rights, making productive activities even less attractive. The aggregate production decrease exceeds the natural resources’ direct positive income effect if and only if the number of rivalling groups is sufficiently large. The model thus predicts that natural resources lower incomes in fractionalized countries, but increase incomes in homogenous countries. Empirical evidence supporting this prediction is provided.     

Natural resources and civil strife: a two-stage process

This article explains why resource-rich countries tend to spawn predatory political states that distort the economy and create four of Collier's conditions for civil strife, namely a growth collapse, low educational attainment, a large cohort of unemployed young males and high resource dependence. Yet, the article also shows that these conditions characterize the resource-rich countries as a group, and most have avoided civil strife. The second part of the study therefore identifies the specific properties of natural resources associated with conflict, namely socio-economic linkages, the ratio of commodity value to weight and relative location. However, this manifestation of the resource curse, like others, is not a deterministic phenomenon so that domestic and global policies can limit resource-driven conflict.