"Resource curse", "Dutch disease", "gold rush", "blood diamonds" - those are just some of the epithets used to characterise the role of natural resources in economic development. They certainly do not set a positive tone for a constructive discussion. The purpose of this report is to change that...

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between export performance and economic growth in Russian regions. We propose a methodology for decomposition of export growth into intensive and extensive margins and distinguish between product- and geographic extensive components within extensive...