It is the irony of human nature, and indeed the incentive mechanism inherent in social institutions, that some societies less endowed by nature strive harder to improve their collective lot, and in many instances succeed in achieving their development objectives more frequently than their...

This paper is a first step toward a more fundamental theory of political economy outcomes. We start from the fundamentals of the economy, given by preferences and technology; further, we specify all available technologies for the control of resources — such as armed forces or bribing. We model...

This paper is a sequel to an earlier paper that looked in broad terms at many of the issues that Mozambique faces today in managing its new extractive resources. The paper first describes the investment surge that has already been prompted by new gas discoveries in Mozambique. It then summarizes...

It is striking how often countries with oil or other natural resource wealth have failed to grow more rapidly than those without. This is the phenomenon known as the Natural Resource Curse. The principle has been borne out in some econometric tests of the determinants of economic performance...