This study explains the emergence of the Sicilian mafia in the XIX century as the product of the interaction between natural resource abundance and weak institutions. We advance the hypothesis that the mafia emerged after the collapse of the Bourbon Kingdom in a context characterized by a severe...

This paper contributes to the literature concerning the natural resource curse by exploring the role of banking development in reducing the resource curse in a natural resource-based country, Yemen. Using time series data over the period 1980–2012, we find that natural resource dependence is...

The relationship between the abundance of natural resources and socio-economic performance has been a main object of study in the economic development field since Adam Smith. Dominated by the verification of the so called curse of natural resource, the mainstream literature on the topic has been...

We criticize existing empirical results on the detrimental effects of natural resource dependence on the rate of economic growth after controlling for institutional quality, openness, and initial income. These results do not survive once we use instrumental variables techniques to correct for...

This Selected Issues paper analyzes the optimal policy response on the part of the Kazakhstan authorities to the prospective oil inflows. It surveys the literature on the so-called natural resource curse and offers an analysis of Kazakhstan’s petroleum potential. The paper analyzes the...

The evidence suggests that resource-rich countries tend to exhibit a relatively constant level of economic complexity, with limited progress. To investigate the underlying causes of this phenomenon, we employed a Pooled Mean Group (PMG) model using data from the top 20 resource-rich economies...

Several explanations have been put forward for the phenomenon - referred to as ¡®curse of natural resources¡¯ - that resource-rich countries tend to display low rates of economic growth. This paper studies an R&D-related explanation, using an endogenous growth model with natural resources...