An Investigation of the Reasons for the Natural Resource Curse: Selected Country Cases

Abstract

Ever since its growing importance, the natural resource abundance and economic growth relationship have been a hot field of study for researchers. In the existing literature, many studies pointing to the negative impact of natural resource endowment on economic growth performance. While some “blessed” natural resource-abundant countries enjoy their natural resource revenues and have a remarkable economic growth performance, many others are “cursed” despite having great natural resource wealth. Natural resource windfall may induce Dutch Disease with excessive rent-seeking, corruption, poor institutionalism, and democracy in resource-rich developing countries. The aim of this study is to investigate the causes of the natural resource curse in developing natural resource-rich countries. In this research, the sample natural resource-rich countries were analyzed between 1980 and 2018 to validate the existence of the natural resource curse in these countries. In the first part, the conceptual framework and reasons for the natural resource curse were explained in detail. In the second part, successful natural resource-rich country cases, as well as selected resource-rich developing countries, were compared according to their economic growth performances, their natural resource revenues, and degree of dependence of their economies on the natural resource revenues. In the last part, some policy suggestions were put forward to avoid a natural resource curse in developing countries.