Resource-rich countries have tended to be autocratic and also have tended to use their resource wealth badly. The neoconservative agenda of promoting democratization in resource-rich countries thus offers the hopeful prospect of a better use of their economic opportunities. This paper examines...

This paper provides an analytic review of the upstream aspects of the exploitation of natural resources: the assignment of ownership rights, taxation, the discovery process, extraction, renewability, and clean-up. It sets these issues within the principal-agent framework. It proposes that the...

Where imports are financed predominantly by rents from resource extraction or aid, the revenue generated by tariffs is illusory. Reveue earned by the tariff is offset by a reduction in the real value of aid and resource rents. Revenue is however moved between accounts in the government budget...

Whereas empirical evidence on the effect of higher commodity prices onthe long-run growth of commodity exporters is ambiguous, time series analyses using vector autoregressive (VAR) models have found that commodity booms raise income in the short run. In this paper we adopt panel error...

This paper addresses the efficient management of natural resource revenues in capital-scarce developing economies. We depart from usual prescriptions based on the permanent income hypothesis, since for capital-scarce countries it is preferable to invest domestically. Since revenue streams are...

This paper explores the choices faced by developing country governments that have received substantial revenues from natural resources. The economic principles underlying the choices between consumption, domestic investment, and the accumulation of foreign assets are analysed. The priority...

This paper investigates the scope for international rules to address market failures in trade in natural resources and the associated international transactions of prospecting and investment in resource exploitation. We argue that several market failures are likely to have substantial costs....

This paper provides an overview of the relationships between natural resources, governance, and economic performance. The relationships run in both directions, with resources potentially altering the quality of governance, and governance being particularly important for resource poor countries....

This paper investigates the role of aid in mitigating the adverse effects of commodity export price shocks on growth in commodity-dependent countries. Using a large cross-country dataset, we find that negative shocks matter for short-term growth, while the ex ante risk of shocks does not seem to...

Countries that are reliant upon commodity exports periodically face large adverse price shocks. Given past volatility the present high world prices for commodities may be a precursor to such shocks. Unsurprisingly, adverse price shocks reduce the growth of constant-price GDP and we analyze which...