Addressing the Natural Resource Curse: An Illustration from Nigeria

Arvind Subramanian and Xavier Sala-i-Martin

No 03/139, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: Some natural resources-oil and minerals in particular-exert a negative and nonlinear impact on growth via their deleterious impact on institutional quality. We show this result to be very robust. The Nigerian experience provides telling confirmation of this aspect of natural resources. Waste and poor institutional quality stemming from oil appear to have been primarily responsible for Nigeria's poor long-run economic performance. We propose a solution for addressing this resource curse which involves directly distributing the oil revenues to the public. Even with all the difficulties that will no doubt plague its actual implementation, our proposal will, at the least, be vastly superior to the status quo. At best, however, it could fundamentally improve the quality of public institutions and, as a result, durably raise long-run growth performance.

Keywords: Oil; Nigeria; Oil revenues; Economic growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-07-28
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2003/wp03139.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Addressing the natural resource curse: An illustration from Nigeria (2003)
Working Paper: Addressing the Natural Resource Curse: An Illustration from Nigeria (2003)
Working Paper: Addressing the Natural Resource Curse: An Illustration from Nigeria (2003)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:imf:imfwpa:03/139

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund
Address: International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().