War or conflict is an activity of aggression and violence with weapons and new technologies for resolving internal and/or international disputes between two or more nations, between organized ethnic, social and religious groups, etc., for the purpose of reducing the freedom of other...

Major oil and gas discoveries are often associated with excitement and jubilation among citizens and government officials. But the extent to which discoveries substantially alter citizen expectations about economic conditions in a country remains an open question. The paper combines...

This paper studies the dynamic effect of oil rents on industrial added value in a sample of countries with different levels of development. Using a SVAR model, we tested the effect of a real shock and a nominal shock on the variables of the model. The main obtained results are three. First, we...

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's; total value added. We identify a number of channels through which resource rents will alter the incentives of a political leader....

A simple model of political entry in a two-sector economy is developed to analyze the effects of natural resource wealth on economic policy, political development, and civil insurrection. The model emphasizes the role of political entry and deadweight costs in taxation on the joint determination...

Can oil discovery shocks affect the demand for protectionism? An intertemporal model of Dutch disease indicates that if the tradable sector is politically dominant then an oil discovery can induce protectionism. If the economy is also credit constrained, this effect is intensified upon...

Are natural resources a source of conflict or stability? Empirical studies demonstrate that rents from natural resources, and in particular oil, are an important source of civil war. Allegedly, resource rents attract rent seekers, which destabilize society. However, there is a large literature...

Although the relationship between natural resources and civil war has received much attention, little is known about the underlying mechanisms. Controversies and contradictions in the stylized facts persist because resource extraction is treated as exogenous while in reality fighting affects...