Lifting the Natural Resource Curse
Article from: OGEL 1 (2004), in In the Spotlight
Introduction
Many of the world's poorest countries possess significant reserves of oil and other natural resources. Yet numerous academic studies show that, controlling for income level, countries that are highly dependent on revenues from oil and other minerals score lower on the UN Human Development Index, exhibit greater corruption, have a greater probability of conflict in any five-year period, have larger shares of their population in poverty, devote a greater share of government spending to military spending, and are more authoritarian than those with more diverse sources of wealth. This ...