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Corruption, Development and the Curse of Natural Resources

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  • Shannon Pendergast
  • Judith Clarke
  • G. Cornelis van Kooten

Abstract

In 1995, Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner found a negative relationship between natural resources and economic growth, and claimed that natural resources are a curse. Their work has been widely cited, with many economists now accepting the curse of natural resources as a welldocumented explanation of poor economic growth in some economies (e.g., Papyrakis and Gerlagh, 2004; Kronenberg, 2004). In this paper, we provide an alternative econometric framework for evaluating this claim, although we begin with a discussion of possible explanations for the curse and a critical assessment of the extant theory underlying the curse. Our approach is to identify natural resources that have the greatest rents and potential for exploitation through rent-seeking agents. The transmission mechanism that we specify works through the effect that rent seeking has on corruption and how that, in turn, impacts wellbeing. Our measure of wellbeing is the Human Development Index, although we find similar results for per capita GDP. While we find that resource abundance does not directly impact economic development, we do find that petroleum resources are associated with rent-seeking behavior that negatively affects wellbeing. Our regression results are robust to various model specifications and sensitivity analyses.

Suggested Citation

  • Shannon Pendergast & Judith Clarke & G. Cornelis van Kooten, 2008. "Corruption, Development and the Curse of Natural Resources," Working Papers 2008-10, University of Victoria, Department of Economics, Resource Economics and Policy Analysis Research Group.
    • Handle: RePEc:rep:wpaper:2008-10
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Andrea Cori & Salvatore Monni, 2014. "The Resource Curse Hypothesis: Evidence from Ecuador," SEEDS Working Papers 2814, SEEDS, Sustainability Environmental Economics and Dynamics Studies, revised Oct 2014.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    natural resource curse; petroleum resources; unbalanced panels and GMM estimation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • Q32 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation - - - Exhaustible Resources and Economic Development
    • Q34 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation - - - Natural Resources and Domestic and International Conflicts
    • O43 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Institutions and Growth
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence

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