자원의 저주에 대한 비판적 고찰

Abstract

The term, curse, is widely used to describe how countries rich in natural resources, such as oil, natural gas, and certain minerals, are unable to utilize that wealth to boost their economies. Contrary to previous research on the topic, this study has demonstrated that natural resources have a strong positive correlation with a country`s economy. It likewise confirmed that this result is robust with broad sets of exogenous variables, and that the positive impact of natural resources on the economy remains significant with the inclusion of capital stock per worker. In this sense, it is doubtful that resource curse actually exists in the long-run. On the other hand, this study tested whether the quality of institutions has any relation with natural resource endowments if the positive effect of natural resource endowments on the gross domestic product (GDP) is adequately controlled for. In contrast to findings of Alexeev and Conrad (2009), if the former Soviet Union (FSU) countries are included, it seems that there might be a negative and statistically significant relationship between large endowments of natural resources and the quality of institutions. However, this negative relationship loses its significance and some positive albeit insignificant relationships are confirmed in a considerable number of cases when the FSU countries are excluded in the sample. That is, the negative relationship results from the inclusion of the FSU countries. This result is believed to happen by a temporary coincidence of events, a natural resource windfall and political and economic instability during the transition of the FSU countries. Therefore, the argument that resource abundance harms the institutional quality is confirmed to be a little groundless.