A New Perspective on the Natural Resource Curse

Thomas C. Kinnaman ()
Additional contact information
Thomas C. Kinnaman: Department of Economics, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA 17837, USA

World, 2023, vol. 4, issue 4, 1-14

Abstract: Early papers found empirical support for a natural resource curse—the notion that exporting natural resources is detrimental to economic growth. Later papers, using reportedly improved econometric models and data, largely reversed these early findings by estimating that natural resources improve economic performance. However, this changing coefficient on natural resource dependence over time may not only be a function of model or data quality. Masked by this evolution in the economics literature is the possibility that the fundamental relationship between natural resources and economic performance has changed over the past several decades. This paper sheds a new perspective on the substantial resource curse literature by repeatedly estimating a single econometric model on data that evolve over time. The coefficient on natural resource dependence is estimated to steadily increases with the passage of time from a value that is negative and significant (for 1970, the basis for much of the early literature) to a positive and significant value a few decades later. Whatever natural resource estimated initially with data from 1970 seems to have evolved into a resource blessing over time.

Keywords: natural resources; economic growth; economic development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G15 G17 G18 L21 L22 L25 L26 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 R51 R52 R58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4060/4/4/42/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4060/4/4/42/ (text/html)

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:gam:jworld:v:4:y:2023:i:4:p:42-683:d:1265252

Access Statistics for this article

World is currently edited by Ms. Cassie Hu

More articles in World from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().