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The artefact of the Natural Resources Curse

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  • Matata Ponyo Mapon
  • Jean-Paul K. Tsasa

Abstract

This paper reexamines the validity of the natural resource curse hypothesis, using the database of mineral exporting countries. Our findings are as follows: (i) Resource-rich countries (RRCs) do not necessarily exhibit poor political, economic and social performance; (ii) RRCs that perform poorly have a low diversified exports portfolio; (iii) In contrast, RRCs with a low diversified exports portfolio do not necessarily perform poorly. Then, we develop a model of strategic interaction from a Bayesian game setup to study the role of leadership and governance in the management of natural resources. We show that an improvement in the leadership-governance binomial helps to discipline the behavior of lobby groups (theorem 1) and generate a Pareto improvement in the management of natural resources (theorem 2). Evidence from the World Bank Group's CPIA data confirms the later finding. Our results remain valid after some robustness checks.

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  • Matata Ponyo Mapon & Jean-Paul K. Tsasa, 2019. "The artefact of the Natural Resources Curse," Papers 1911.09681, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:1911.09681
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