The Resource Curse: A Statistical Mirage?

A surprising feature of resource-rich economies is slow growth. It is often argued that natural-resource production impedes development by creating market or institutional failures. This paper establishes an alternative explanation - a slow-growing resource sector. A declining resource sector is disproportionally reflected in resource-dependent countries but appears to have little affect on the rest of the economy. More generally, this paper illustrates the importance of considering industry composition in cross-country growth regressions.