A significant natural resource discovery creates excited popular expectations of imminent wealth. But the size of a boom is usually overestimated and the delay in receiving revenues is underestimated. This paper takes stock of the sequencing, timing, and scale of the development of a natural...

Is resource abundance a blessing or a curse? Typically, in resource rich countries, domestic fuel prices are lower, and energy intensity of GDP is higher. But they have higher investment in R&D and fixed capital stock, larger foreign exchange reserves and more inflows of FDI. They also have...

Using cross-country regressions, we examine the relationship between “point-source” resource abundance and economic growth, quality of institutions, investment in human and physical capital, and social welfare (life expectancy and infant mortality). Contrary to most literature, we find...

The curse of natural resources detected in numerous cross-country growth regressions is questioned. Although natural resource dependence is associated with slow economic growth, there is no evidence that natural resource abundance per se is negatively related to growth. Thus, the supposed link...

Using cross-country regressions, we examine the relationship between “point-source” resource abundance and economic growth, quality of institutions, investment in human and physical capital, and social welfare (life expectancy and infant mortality) for all countries and for the economies in...

A model of optimal harvesting natural resources is presented to show the appropriate management decision rule a natural-based society should follow to prevent its environment from over-exploitation. This optimal control analysis is likely to produce some changes in the topological structure of...

Economics now recognize that, along with physical and human capital, environmental resources should be viewed as important economic assets, which can be called natural capital. Three recent debates have emerged over the role of natural capital in economic development. First, as many ecological...