We use variation in oil output among Brazilian municipalities to investigate the effects of resource windfalls. We find muted effects of oil through market channels: offshore oil has no effect on municipal non-oil GDP or its composition, while onshore oil has only modest effects on non-oil GDP...

Mineral resources present a formidable source of wealth but a formidable challenge to regulate in order to maximize social welfare from their extraction. Some resource-rich countries, such as Chile, have been successful in developing their economies and managing their revenue streams...

Mineral resources present a formidable source of wealth but a formidable challenge to regulate in order to maximize social welfare from their extraction. Some resource-rich countries, such as Chile, have been successful in developing their economies and managing their revenue streams...

Many studies find that areas more dependent on natural resources grow more slowly – a relationship known as the resource curse. For counties in the south-central U.S., I find little evidence of an emerging curse from greater natural gas production in the 2000s. Each gas-related mining job...

Improvements in technology have made it profitable to tap unconventional gas reservoirs in relatively impermeable shale and sandstone deposits, which are spread throughout the U.S., mostly in rural areas. Proponents of gas drilling point to the activity's local economic benefits yet no empirical...

This paper examines the local economic impact of Yanacocha, a large gold mine in Northern Peru. Using annual household data from 1997 to 2006, we find evidence of a positive effect of the mine?s demand for local inputs on real income. The effects are only present in the supply market and...

A large literature has developed that documents a negative association between the presence of natural resources and economic development. In this paper we explore the empirics and theories of the so-called resource curse and try to assess its robustness. We conclude that there are many open...

This paper extends the concept of the resource curse by studying whether and through which transmission channels natural resource wealth affects social spending. Even though the availability of vast natural capital reserves has commonly been linked to the neglect of human development, most of...

Oil exporters typically do not consider below-ground assets when allocating their sovereign wealth fund portfolios, and ignore above-ground assets when extracting oil. We present a unified framework for considering both. Subsoil oil should alter a fund’s portfolio through additional leverage...

The paper aims at investigating the dependency of the Russian economy on natural resources, underlining the causes and the possible consequences of this growth strategy. The analysis tries to evaluate if the Russian manufacturing has contracted the "Dutch Disease", that is, if a boom in the oil...