Shining a Light on the Resource Curse: An Empirical Analysis of the Relationship Between Natural Resources, Transparency, and Economic Growth

Andrew Williams ()

World Development, 2011, vol. 39, issue 4, 490-505

Abstract: Summary One of the most common policy prescriptions for overcoming the so-called "resource curse," particularly for extractive industries, has been to call for greater transparency and accountability from governments. However, despite the conceptual attraction of this policy, it has never been empirically proven that resource-rich countries are actually less transparent than other countries, and whether this lack of transparency has had a significant negative effect on economic growth. Using a relatively new index of transparency that has extensive coverage, both across countries and time, the results suggest a strong and robust negative causal association running from (point) resource export revenues to transparency. Furthermore, there is also some evidence that this lack of transparency is associated with a subsequent decrease in economic growth.

Keywords: transparency; natural; resources; economic; growth; Middle; East; countries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (50)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305-750X(10)00182-8
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:wdevel:v:39:y:2011:i:4:p:490-505

Access Statistics for this article

World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes

More articles in World Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().