While natural resource revenues ought to enable development, past experiences with the 'Paradox of Plenty' have shown that mineral and oil wealth often represents a curse rather than a blessing, inducing slower growth and higher levels of poverty. Many resource rich countries have high poverty...

We provide cross-country evidence that rejects the traditional interpretation of the natural resource curse. First, growth depends negatively on volatility of unanticipated output growth independent of initial income, investment, human capital, trade openness, natural resource dependence, and...

Massive deposits of shale gas are now potentially accessible, thanks to the development of innovative technologies like fracking and deep water drilling. Despite some clear negatives — water and air pollution near production sites, the risks of deep water drilling, and political opposition to...

Natural resource abundance is a blessing for some countries, but a curse for others. We show that differences across countries in the degree of fiscal decentralization can contribute to this divergent outcome. Using a large panel of countries, covering several decades and various fiscal...

Using annual data from 1980 to 2014, we reexamine the relationship between democracy and natural resources for a large sample of emerging market economies. Controlling for human capital (or real GDP per capita) and openness measures, dynamic panel methods address endogeneity from more democratic...

This paper examines whether natural resource dependence has a negative influence on various indicators of institutional quality when controlling for the potential effects of other geographic, economic and cultural initial conditions. Analysis of a panel of countries from 1996 to 2010 indicates...