The analysis of ‘Financial Resource Curse’ hypothesis for developed countries: Evidence from asymmetric effects with quantile regression

Abstract

A vast body of literature either proxies natural resource abundance with total rents or focuses on the natural resource curse hypothesis. Furthermore, most empirical studies in the literature use traditional estimation methods. To fill the mentioned gaps, this study investigates the financial resource curse hypothesis by using the linkage between financial development and four natural resource rents (oil rents, coal rents, forest rents and natural gas rents) and applying the panel quantile regression with fixed effects on a dataset for a group of developed countries. This study finds that oil rents, coal rents, forest rents and natural gas rents have a positive effect on financial development, which supports financial resource blessing against financial resource curse for developed countries. In addition, a robust examination is conducted by applying the Canay two-step framework. The outcomes verify the main findings although the incremental effect on financial development of forest rents is greater than the other three proxies. This situation can be described as critical for the sustainability of developments related to natural resource rents in financial development and new set of suggestions can be made for policymakers.