THE DEVELOPMENT EFFECTS OF NATURAL RESOURCES: A GEOGRAPHICAL DIMENSION

Fabrizio Carmignani () and Abdur Chowdhury ()

No wp1022, William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series from William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Abstract: Despite the recent growth resurgence, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) remains the poorest region in the world. At the same time, it is a region that heavily relies on natural resources. In this paper we investigate the extent to which the second fact helps explain the first one. The distinctive feature of our study is that we take a geographical perspective and allow the effect of natural resources to differ across regions of the world. Our findings suggest that (i) the effect of natural resource intensity on per-capita income is positive and significant in general, but almost negligible and possibly negative in SSA, (ii) natural resources have a negative effect on institutional quality in SSA only, (iii) natural resources hinder human capital accumulation in SSA much more than anywhere else, and (iv) the combination of bad disease environments and large resource endowments accounts for most of the observed cross-regional differences in the effect of natural resources.

Keywords: Development; Sub-Saharan Africa; natural resources; disease; institutions; human capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O11 O55 Q28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: pages
Date: 2011-11-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev, nep-env, nep-pke and nep-res
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Working Paper: The Development Effects of Natural Resources: A Geographical Dimension (2011)
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