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

Whereas empirical evidence on the effect of higher commodity prices onthe long-run growth of commodity exporters is ambiguous, time series analyses using vector autoregressive (VAR) models have found that commodity booms raise income in the short run. In this paper we adopt panel error...

This paper investigates the role of aid in mitigating the adverse effects of commodity export price shocks on growth in commodity-dependent countries. Using a large cross-country dataset, we find that negative shocks matter for short-term growth, while the ex ante risk of shocks does not seem to...

Countries that are reliant upon commodity exports periodically face large adverse price shocks. Given past volatility the present high world prices for commodities may be a precursor to such shocks. Unsurprisingly, adverse price shocks reduce the growth of constant-price GDP and we analyze which...