We examine the effect that revenue windfalls from international commodity price shocks have on sovereign bond spreads using panel data for 30 emerging market economies during the period 1997-2007. Our main finding is that positive commodity price shocks lead to a significant reduction in the...

Many countries have failed to use natural resource wealth to promote growth and development. They have been damaged by the volatility of revenues and have failed to save a sufficiently high proportion of their resource revenues and failed to make high-return investments to support...