Despite a growing literature on the natural resource curse, existing studies are sparse on how real effective exchange rate, political stability and corruption shape the relationship between natural resources and tourism revenues. This study analyses both the direct and indirect effects of...

“Being rich in energy resources – a blessing or a curse” finds that an energy resource curse plagues many EU supplier states. This in turn directly affects Europe’s energy supply security and threatens to engulf Europe in unwanted hostilities at home and abroad. The study addresses seven...

This paper examines the effect of oil abundance on political violence. First, we revisit one of the main empirical findings of the civil conflict literature that oil abundance causes civil war. Using a unique panel dataset describing worldwide oil discoveries and extractions, we show that simply...

In this paper we examine the claim that natural resources invite civil conflict, and challenge the main stylized facts in this literature. We find that the nature of causation between resource dependence and civil war is opposite to conventional wisdom. In particular, (i) civil war creates...

We use new data to examine the effects of giant oilfield discoveries around the world since 1946. On average, these discoveries increase per capita oil production and oil exports by up to 50 percent. But these giant oilfield discoveries also have a dark side: they increase the incidence of...

This article examines the context and impact of the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI). I hyppothesize that EITI is not as effective as it could be because the governments, firms, and NGOs involved in EITI have very different visions of EITI. In EITI, firms are supposed to...

In this paper we examine the claim that natural resources invite civil conflict, and challenge the main stylized facts in this literature. We find that the conventional measure of resource dependence is endogenous with respect to conflict, and that instrumenting for dependence implies that it is...

Several scholars have argued that abundant natural resources can be harmful to economic performance under bad institutions and helpful when institutions are good. These arguments have either been theoretical or based on naturally-occurring variation in natural resource wealth. We test this...