Summary The literature on the "resource curse" suggests that the quality of institutions determines a country's ability to transform resource wealth into economic development. This article explores the link between resource rents, institutions, and economic performance by focusing on the case of...

Empirical evidence shows that countries richly endowed with natural resources like oil and gas tend to have slower economic growth than resource poor countries. The present paper focuses on rentseeking as a source of the “resource curse,” using Iran as a case in point. Iran is an interesting...