Curses, Diseases and Other Resource Confusions

Alfredo Saad-Filho and John Weeks

Third World Quarterly, 2013, vol. 34, issue 1, 1-21

Abstract: Natural resource rents, development assistance and unrequited foreign exchange inflows such as remittances relax the balance of payments constraint on economic growth. The failure of some governments to translate these resources into successful development has been attributed to an affliction called ‘Dutch disease’, or, more ominously, to a ‘curse’ associated with the availability of natural resources. This paper examines the disease/curse analysis and rejects it in favour of a political economy explanation of the problems associated with resource use. We argue that conventional analysis of resource-rich countries is misleading because its various manifestations are based on inappropriate assumptions and flawed logic. In practice the ‘curse’ and the ‘disease’ are outcomes of policy decisions, rather than manifestations of deep structural weaknesses, and they are more likely to be suffered in countries whose governments pursue neoliberal economic policies.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01436597.2012.755010 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:34:y:2013:i:1:p:1-21

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ctwq20

DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2012.755010

Access Statistics for this article

Third World Quarterly is currently edited by Shahid Qadir

More articles in Third World Quarterly from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().