The literature on the impact of an abundance of natural resources on economic performance remains inconclusive. In this paper we consider the possibility that countries may follow different growth regimes, and test the hypothesis that whether natural resources are a curse or a blessing depends...

We develop a dynamic game to provide with a theory of Arab spring-type events. We consider two interacting groups, the elite vs the citizens, two political regimes, dictatorship vs a freer regime, the possibility to switch from the first to the second regime as a consequence of a revolution, and...

We consider a framework à la Wirl (1994) where political liberalization is the outcome of a lobbying differential game between a conservative elite and a reformist group, the former player pushing against political liberalization in opposition to the latter. In contrast to the benchmark model,...

Using mineral resources discoveries in the United States since 1800, we argue that mineral mining fosters individualism. Measuring individualism and the demand for redistribution by questions of the General Social Survey (GSS), we show that: (i) individuals living in states with mineral...

In this article, overlapping generations are extracting a natural resource over an infinite future. We examine the fair allocation of resource and compensations among generations. Fairness is defined by core lower bounds and aspiration upper bounds. The core lower bounds require that every...

Using mineral resources discoveries in the United States since 1800, we argue that mineral mining fosters individualism. Measuring individualism and the demand for redistribution by questions of the General Social Survey (GSS), we show that: (i) individuals living in states with mineral...

There are two main approaches for defining social welfare relations for an economy with infinite horizon. The first one is to consider the set of intertemporal utility streams generated by a general set of bounded consumptions and define a preference relation between them. This relation is...

This article analyses through a rent seeking model, the relationship between institutions' quality and natural resources. Depending on the institutions quality, each country has a specific structural capacity to stand natural resources dependency. It is shown that for each country, a threshold...

The empirical evidence on the determinants of growth across countries has found that growth is lower when natural resources are abundant, corruption widespread and educational attainment low. An extensive literature has examined the way in which these three variables can impact growth, but has...

After a few centuries of speeding up, the distribution of GNP's growth rates has widely changed all round the world. Growth is slowing down in advanced countries and has accelerated in emerging countries. Moreover growth is questioned as a matter of principle. Considering the vast array of...