Las economías que tienen grandes dotaciones de recursos naturales, especialmente aquéllas abundantes en petróleo y minerales, son consideradas a menudo como poco probables de alcanzar altos niveles de desarrollo. Se dice que las rentas provenientes de la extracción de los recursos minerales, que podrían utilizarse para iniciar un proceso de crecimiento económico en el país, tienen en la práctica una serie de efectos negativos que sobrepasan sus potenciales contribuciones positivas. Sin embargo, parece que estos resultados son sensibles a la selección de las variables que capturan la abundancia de recursos naturales en un país, y que tener recursos minerales o petróleo no necesariamente retarda el crecimiento económico. Este estudio evaluará si la posición de quienes sostienen que los países ricos en minerales están condenados a un bajo crecimiento económico es teórica y...

Páginas [245]-272

Economies that have large endowments of natural resources, especially the ones that rely on oil and minerals, are ofien regarded as unlikely to develop, or even seen as cursed by nature. It is said that the mineral rents, which could be used to trigger a growth process, have in practice several negative effects that by and large counteract their potential positive contributions. Nevertheless, it seems that these results are sensitive to the measures of resource abundance that are used, and mineral resource abundance might not be necessarily growth retarding. This study will evaluate if the arguments to uphold that mineral rich countries are doomed to low economic growth are strong and sound by testing a number of robustness checks on the standard models of resources and growth. We test if there are any specification bias in the model proposed- in particular of omitted variables- and if t...

Economies that have large endowments of natural resources, especially the ones thatrely on oil and minerals, are ofien regarded as unlikely to develop, or even seen as cursedby nature. It is said that the mineral rents, which could be used to trigger a growthprocess, have in practice several negative effects that by and large counteract their potentialpositive contributions. Nevertheless, it seems that these results are sensitive tothe measures of resource abundance that are used, and mineral resource abundancemight not be necessarily growth retarding. This study will evaluate if the arguments touphold that mineral rich countries are dwmed to low economic growth are strong andsound by testing a number of robustness checks on the standard models of resourcesand growth. We test if there are any specification bias in the model proposed i n pa rticularof omitted variables- and if the resourc...

Economies that have large endowments of natural resources, especially the ones thatrely on oil and minerals, are ofien regarded as unlikely to develop, or even seen as cursedby nature. It is said that the mineral rents, which could be used to trigger a growthprocess, have in practice several negative effects that by and large counteract their potentialpositive contributions. Nevertheless, it seems that these results are sensitive tothe measures of resource abundance that are used, and mineral resource abundancemight not be necessarily growth retarding. This study will evaluate if the arguments touphold that mineral rich countries are dwmed to low economic growth are strong andsound by testing a number of robustness checks on the standard models of resourcesand growth. We test if there are any specification bias in the model proposed i n pa rticularof omitted variables- and if the resourc...