Since 1980, the aggregate income of oil-exporting countries relative to that of oil- poor countries has been remarkably constant despite structural gaps in productivity growth rates. This stylized fact is analyzed in a two-country model where resource- poor (Home) and resource-rich (Foreign)...

We study the incentives of selfish governments to tax tradable primary inputs un- der asymmetric trade. Using an empirically-consistent model of endogenous growth, we obtain explicit links between persistent gaps in productivity growth and the observed tendency of resource-exporting (importing)...