Institutions, crucial for the analysis of how agents deal with uncertainty, have been gaining increasing relevance on the Economic research agenda. In this paper, we analyze the institutional literature that provides insights into different research fields, aiming to explain why this perspective...

This study shows that the cross-section “curse” result found with oil abundance indicators for producing countries disappears in a panel estimation considering the most important growth factors. This happens even excluding institutional quality, which is hindered by oil and ores abundance in...

This study re-evaluates the impact of natural resources on growth using panel data and a factor-efficiency accounting framework. The resource-curse thesis is dismissed as capital efficiency is improved by geographically-concentrated natural resources, which hinder institutional quality in recent...

This paper presents a survey of literature on the `resource curse', a puzzling empirical result that associates natural resource riches with lower economic growth. We show the main theories that attempt to explain the curse ? ranging from the structuralist theses of the 1950s to recent and more...

We use an extensive dataset on occupational wages to measure the manufacturing skill premium and evaluate the importance of the main drivers in literature plus the effects of natural resources and institutions. Results, regarding a panel of 21 countries between 1987 and 2003, suggest the...