The Paradox of Plenty: A Meta-Analysis

Since Sachs and Warner's seminal paper in 1995, a conventional wisdom has spread in the academic literature stating that a high endowment in natural resources may be detrimental for growth. The great heterogeneity of development paths followed among resource-rich countries has shown that the resource curse was not always inevitable, and that there existed ways to make the most of one's natural wealth. We identified three sources of heterogeneity in the literature: the use of abundance and intensity measures, the account for appropriability aspects of resources and finally, the role of institutions. In this paper, we aim at providing quantitative results on the magnitude of the link between natural resources and growth found in the literature, as well as discussing, on quantitative bases, whether the sources of heterogeneity are significant. To this end, we implement a meta-analysis based on 67 empirical studies that investigate the link between natural resources and growth, totaling 1405 estimates. The results show a "soft" curse that may be reverted together with the importance of institutions in mitigating the curse.