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 study whether the spatial distribution of natural resources across different ethnic groups within countries impede spatial inequality, national economic performance, and the incidence of armed conflict. By providing a theoretical rent-seeking model and analysing a set of geocoded data for...

Referring to the original context of Dutch Disease, the term refers to the fears of de-industrialization that gripped the Netherlands as a result of the appreciation of the Dutch currency that followed the discovery of natural gas deposits. Expansion of petroleum exports in the 1960s not only...