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’stotal value added. We identify a number of channels through which resource rentswill alter the incentives of a political leader....

A central role for economic policy involves reducing the incidence of systemic downturns,when key economic variables experience joint extreme events. In this paper,we empirically analyze such asymmetric dependence using two approaches, correlationsand copulas. We document four findings. First,...