Since Sachs and Warner's (1995a) contribution, there has been a lively debate on the so-called natural resource curse. This paper re-examines the effects of natural resource abundance on economic growth using new measures of resource endowment and considering the role of institutional quality....

We critically evaluate the empirical basis for the so-called resource curse and find that, despite the topic’s popularity in economics and political science research, this apparent paradox is a red herring. The most commonly used measure of ‘resource abundance’ can be more usefully...

This paper examines the impact of oil on economic growth in transition economies of the former Soviet Union (FSU) and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). We use oil production and reserves data in a series of panel estimations to show that oil has had strong and robust positive growth effects...

We analyze an economy in which sectors are heterogeneous with respect to the intensity of natural resource use. Long-term dynamics are driven by resource prices, sectoral composition, and directed technical change. We study the balanced growth path and determine stability conditions. Technical...

In this paper we study the incentives for basic-research investments by governments in a globalized world. For this purpose, we develop a two-country Schumpeterian growth model in which each country chooses its basic-research investments. We find that a country's basic-research investments...