The paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the natural resource curse, which postulates a negative link between natural resource abundance and economic growth. It shows empirically that resource-rich countries appear to have a less developed financial system and investigates a potential...

We discuss political economy mechanisms which can explain the resource curse, in which an increase in the size of resource rents causes a decrease in the economy's total value added. We identify a number of channels through which resource rents will alter the incentives of a political leader....

The resource curse literature's main lesson is that developing and natural resource-rich countries should save most of their oil windfalls in foreign currency. Moreover, the political cycle literature's recent contributions predict stronger cycles in these countries. This paper investigates how...