Natural Resources: Are They Really a Curse?

The curse of natural resources detected in numerous cross-country growth regressions isquestioned. Although natural resource dependence is associated with slow economic growth, there is no evidence that natural resource abundance per se is negatively related to growth. Thus, the supposed link between resource dependence and growth arises not from the numerator of the dependence measures (i.e. resources themselves) but rather, because of the inherent relationship between slow growth and a small non-resource sector caused by other undetermined characteristics of the economy.