My paper is the first to provide long-run evidence on the dynamic effects of supply and demand shocks on mineral commodity prices. I assemble and analyze a new data set of prices and production levels of copper, lead, tin, zinc, and crude oil from 1840 to 2010. Price fluctuations are primarily...

The paper aims at investigating the dependency of the Russian economy on natural resources, underlining the causes and the possible consequences of this growth model. The analysis tries to evaluate if the Russian manufacturing has contracted the “Dutch Disease”, that is, if a boom in the oil...

Natural resource dependence is believed to have potential impact on institutional development, and there is growing consensus in the academic literature that institutional weakness is central to the explanation of the negative effects of resource booms. Generally, the quality of institutional...

The short-term economic benefits of oil and gas production from shale for the U.S. economy have been widely discussed, but the long-term effects remain unclear. These long-run impacts likely depend upon the degree to which such oil and gas production can impact growth in capital per worker or...

The dramatic increase in oil and gas production from shale formations has led to intense interest in its impact on local area economies. Exploration, drilling and extraction are associated with direct increases in employment and income in the energy industry, but little is known about the...

Surprisingly little is known about the impact of natural resource booms on income inequality in resource rich countries (Ross, 2007). This paper develops a theory, in the context of a two sector growth model in which learning-by-doing drives growth, to explain the time path of inequality...

Currently, evidence on the ‘resource curse’ yields a conundrum. While there is much cross section evidence to support the curse hypothesis, time series analyses using vector autoregressive (VAR) models have found that commodity booms raise the growth of commodity exporters. This paper adopts...

The present paper deals with the role of political authorities and institutions in explaining growth failures. We aim to search answers for three related questions: is there a natural resources curse? Are all types of natural resources exposed to a curse? Can good institutions, measured by a...

There is an adage about wealth and democracy that says “the more well-to-do a nation, the greater the chances it will sustain democracy.” Accordingly, one would expect that nations rich in natural resources, and particularly those with large deposits of oil – a clear absolute advantage –...

“Being rich in energy resources – a blessing or a curse” finds that an energy resource curse plagues many EU supplier states. This in turn directly affects Europe’s energy supply security and threatens to engulf Europe in unwanted hostilities at home and abroad. The study addresses seven...