IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ost/wpaper/372.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Exploiting a natural resource in a poor country: The good, the bad and the ugly sides of the Kyrgyz Republic’s gold mine

Author

Listed:
  • Richard Pomfret

    (University of Adelaide)

Abstract

What is required for a poor country to turn a valuable resource endowment into a driver of development? The resource curse literature highlighted the importance of institutions and the nature of the resource, neither of which is a useful policy guide. A more recent literature views resource exploitation as a series of hurdles that must be negotiated: ensuring production, dividing revenues, and using the added public finance. The Kyrgyz Republic’s Kumtor gold mine is a useful case study in that the country cleared the first hurdle but over almost a quarter century was embroiled in negotiating the second hurdle. The paper assesses the extent to which such problems are inevitable for a small poor country, and the consequences of an extended conflictual process.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard Pomfret, 2018. "Exploiting a natural resource in a poor country: The good, the bad and the ugly sides of the Kyrgyz Republic’s gold mine," Working Papers 372, Leibniz Institut für Ost- und Südosteuropaforschung (Institute for East and Southeast European Studies).
    • Handle: RePEc:ost:wpaper:372
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.dokumente.ios-regensburg.de/publikationen/wp/wp_372.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jeffrey D. Sachs & Andrew M. Warner, 1995. "Natural Resource Abundance and Economic Growth," NBER Working Papers 5398, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Alexeev, Michael & Conrad, Robert, 2011. "The natural resource curse and economic transition," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 445-461.
    3. Frederick van der Ploeg, 2011. "Natural Resources: Curse or Blessing?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(2), pages 366-420, June.
    4. Christa N. Brunnschweiler, 2009. "Oil and Growth in Transition Countries," OxCarre Working Papers 029, Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies, University of Oxford.
    5. Frankel, Jeffrey A., 2010. "The Natural Resource Curse: A Survey," Scholarly Articles 4454156, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
    6. Anthony J. Venables, 2016. "Using Natural Resources for Development: Why Has It Proven So Difficult?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 30(1), pages 161-184, Winter.
    7. Li, Bin Grace & Gupta, Pranav & Yu, Jiangyan, 2017. "From natural resource boom to sustainable economic growth: Lessons from Mongolia," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 7-25.
    8. Richard Pomfret, 2011. "Exploiting Energy and Mineral Resources in Central Asia, Azerbaijan and Mongolia," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 53(1), pages 5-33, March.
    9. Pomfret, Richard, 2012. "Resource management and transition in Central Asia, Azerbaijan and Mongolia," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 146-156.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ocaklı, Beril & Krueger, Tobias & Janssen, Marco A. & Kasymov, Ulan, 2021. "Taking the discourse seriously: Rational self-interest and resistance to mining in Kyrgyzstan," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Horváth, Roman & Zeynalov, Ayaz, 2016. "Natural resources, manufacturing and institutions in post-Soviet countries," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 141-148.
    2. Pomfret, Richard, 2012. "Resource management and transition in Central Asia, Azerbaijan and Mongolia," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 146-156.
    3. Ben-Salha, Ousama & Dachraoui, Hajer & Sebri, Maamar, 2021. "Natural resource rents and economic growth in the top resource-abundant countries: A PMG estimation," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    4. Yilanci, Veli & Aslan, Murat & Ozgur, Onder, 2021. "Disaggregated analysis of the curse of natural resources in most natural resource-abundant countries," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    5. Hilmawan, Rian & Clark, Jeremy, 2019. "An investigation of the resource curse in Indonesia," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    6. Alexeev, Michael & Chernyavskiy, Andrey, 2015. "Taxation of natural resources and economic growth in Russia's regions," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 317-338.
    7. Harouna Kinda, 2021. "Does transparency pay ? The impact of EITI on tax revenues in resource-rich developing countries," Working Papers hal-03208955, HAL.
    8. Amir Mousavi & Jeremy Clark, 2021. "The effects of natural resources on human capital accumulation: A literature survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(4), pages 1073-1117, September.
    9. Roman Horváth & Ayaz Zeynalov, 2014. "The Natural Resource Curse in Post-Soviet Countries : The Role of Institutions and Trade Policies," Working Papers 341, Leibniz Institut für Ost- und Südosteuropaforschung (Institute for East and Southeast European Studies).
    10. Cheng, Zhonghua & Li, Lianshui & Liu, Jun, 2020. "Natural resource abundance, resource industry dependence and economic green growth in China," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    11. Rian Hilmawan & Jeremy Clark, 2021. "Resource dependence and the causes of local economic growth: An empirical investigation," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 65(3), pages 596-626, July.
    12. James, Alexander, 2019. "Fata morganas in oil-rich, institution-poor economies," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 234-242.
    13. Adnan Ali & Suresh Ramakrishnan & Faisal Faisal & Tooba Akram & Sidra Salam & Sami Ur Rahman, 2023. "Bibliometric analysis of finance and natural resources: past trend, current development, and future prospects," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 25(11), pages 13035-13064, November.
    14. Nicoletta Corrocher & Camilla Lenzi & Marie-Louise Deshaires, 2020. "The curse of natural resources: an empirical analysis of European regions," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(12), pages 1694-1708, December.
    15. Shakti Mohan TANDI & Prajna Paramita MISHRA, 2020. "Are resources a curse or blessings? Evidence from panel ARDL model," Theoretical and Applied Economics, Asociatia Generala a Economistilor din Romania - AGER, vol. 0(2(623), S), pages 191-204, Summer.
    16. Liu, Kaiyuan & Afzal, Ayesha & Zhong, Yifan & Hasnaoui, Amir & Yue, Xiao-Guang, 2023. "Investigating the resource curse: Evidence from MENA and N-11 countries," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    17. Michael Alexeev & Yao-Yu Chih, 2017. "Oil Price Shocks and Economic Growth in the Us," CAEPR Working Papers 2017-011, Center for Applied Economics and Policy Research, Department of Economics, Indiana University Bloomington.
    18. Obaya, Martín & López, Andrés & Pascuini, Paulo, 2021. "Curb your enthusiasm. Challenges to the development of lithium-based linkages in Argentina," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    19. Edouard Mien & Michaël Goujon, 2022. "40 Years of Dutch Disease Literature: Lessons for Developing Countries," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 64(3), pages 351-383, September.
    20. Badeeb, Ramez Abubakr & Lean, Hooi Hooi & Clark, Jeremy, 2017. "The evolution of the natural resource curse thesis: A critical literature survey," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 123-134.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Resource curse; minerals; Kyrgyzstan;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q32 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation - - - Exhaustible Resources and Economic Development
    • O53 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Asia including Middle East
    • L72 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Primary Products and Construction - - - Mining, Extraction, and Refining: Other Nonrenewable Resources
    • N55 - Economic History - - Agriculture, Natural Resources, Environment and Extractive Industries - - - Asia including Middle East

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ost:wpaper:372. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kseniia Gatskova (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/osteide.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.