Volatile and spatially varied: The geographically differentiated economic outcomes of resource-based development in Peru, 2001–2015

Abstract

The macroeconomic impacts of resource-based development are diverse across national space. However, the more export dependent and geographically peripheral the region, the more susceptible it is to boom-and-bust cycles. We typify resource-based economic development in Peru in the period 2001–2015, analyzing regional export specialization, growth volatility, and de-industrialization, three resource curse symptoms. With the commodity cycle: (i) export specialization is not the same in all mineral regions; (ii) regional growth volatility is much higher at regional level than at national level; and (iii) there is no convincing case of de-industrialization and the Dutch disease, because a world economy surge does not operate as a national resource discovery. We say economic evolution within resource-rich Peru is volatile and spatially varied. At the national level, gold-and-copper-dependent Peru is not as vulnerable as other mineral dependent countries to external shocks. At the subnational level, growth volatility is very high for clusters of regions. Economic geography studies can contribute to challenging popular resource curse accounts of the development economics literature: we should be asking where, when, and why there is curse or blessing, and what type of it, rather than searching for a definitive universal answer on the developmental effects of mineral abundance.