Do resource-extraction booms crowd out postsecondary education? We explore this question by examining the higher education-related decisions of Chilean high school graduates during the 2000s commodities boom. We find mineral extraction increases a person's likelihood of enrolling in...

The relationship between the abundance of natural resources and socio-economic performance has been a main object of study in the economic development field since Adam Smith. Dominated by the verification of the so called curse of natural resource, the mainstream literature on the topic has been...

This study proposes a new mechanism for the resource curse: crowding-out of innovation due to the existence of an option to engage in conflict. Using a game theoretical framework, it is argued that an increase in the amount of natural resources (in the informal sector here conflict for a...

We investigate whether the degree of energy dependency of countries influences their macroeconomic performance in terms of long-run growth. Specifically, we study whether the impact of energy price changes on economic growth differs depending on a country's degree of energy dependency. There are...

It is a common assumption that regions within the same country converge to approximately the same steady-state income levels. The so-called absolute convergence hypothesis focuses on initial income levels to account for the variability in income growth among regions. Empirical data seem to...

We examine empirically the effect of natural resource abundance on economic growth. We find that natural resources have a negative impact on growth when considered in isolation, but a positive impact on growth when including in the analysis other variables such as corruption, investments,...

Okun's law is one of the most widely-known stylized facts in the macroeconomic literature and policy. In this paper, we study several aspects of Okun's law in Macedonia between 2004 and 2014. Aggregate indicators show a link between output and unemployment that is in line with this empirical...

The positive association between the service sector share of output and per capita income is one of the best-known regularities in all of growth and development economics. Yet there is less than complete agreement on the nature of that association. Here we identify two waves of service sector...