IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lmu/muenar/62852.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Political economy, Mr. Churchill, and natural resources

Author

Listed:
  • Gylfason, Thorvaldur

Abstract

The article recalls Winston Churchill's advocacy of public ownership of natural resources in Africa in the early 1900s. Following a brief discussion of different countries' methods of natural resource management, empirical evidence of the cross-country relationship between economic and political diversification and per capita national income is presented to suggest a new channel through which excessive dependence on poorly managed natural resources, including oil and other minerals, may hamper economic and social progress. Constitutional issues, democracy, and human rights are brought to bear on the story to underline the conceptual distinction between state ownership and national ownership of natural resources.

Suggested Citation

  • Gylfason, Thorvaldur, 2018. "Political economy, Mr. Churchill, and natural resources," Munich Reprints in Economics 62852, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:lmu:muenar:62852
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Aguilera,Roberto F. & Radetzki,Marian, 2015. "The Price of Oil," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107110014, September.
    2. N Gregory Mankiw, 2009. "Smart Taxes: An Open Invitation to Join the Pigou Club," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 35(1), pages 14-23.
    3. Cesar A. Hidalgo & Ricardo Hausmann, 2009. "The Building Blocks of Economic Complexity," Papers 0909.3890, arXiv.org.
    4. Christian Henn & Mr. Chris Papageorgiou & Mr. Nikola Spatafora, 2013. "Export Quality in Developing Countries," IMF Working Papers 2013/108, International Monetary Fund.
    5. Sachs, J-D & Warner, A-M, 1995. "Natural Resource Abundance and Economic Growth," Papers 517a, Harvard - Institute for International Development.
    6. Kolstad, Ivar & Wiig, Arne, 2009. "It's the rents, stupid! The political economy of the resource curse," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(12), pages 5317-5325, December.
    7. Frederick van der Ploeg, 2011. "Natural Resources: Curse or Blessing?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(2), pages 366-420, June.
    8. Thorvaldur Gylfason, 2017. "From Double Diversification to Efficiency and Growth," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 59(2), pages 149-168, June.
    9. Aguilera,Roberto F. & Radetzki,Marian, 2015. "The Price of Oil," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107525627, September.
    10. Daron Acemoglu & Suresh Naidu & Pascual Restrepo & James A. Robinson, 2019. "Democracy Does Cause Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(1), pages 47-100.
    11. Weitzman, Martin & Gylfason, Thorvaldur, 2003. "Icelandic Fisheries Management: Fees versus Quotas," CEPR Discussion Papers 3849, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Xavier Sala-i-Martin & Arvind Subramanian, 2013. "Addressing the Natural Resource Curse: An Illustration from Nigeria," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 22(4), pages 570-615, August.
    13. Bergstrom, Theodore C, 1982. "On Capturing Oil Rents with a National Excise Tax," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(1), pages 194-201, March.
    14. Andersen, Jørgen Juel & Aslaksen, Silje, 2008. "Constitutions and the resource curse," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 227-246, October.
    15. Anthony J. Venables, 2016. "Using Natural Resources for Development: Why Has It Proven So Difficult?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 30(1), pages 161-184, Winter.
    16. Thorvaldur Gylfason & Jean-Pascal Nguessa Nganou, 2014. "Diversification, Dutch Disease, and Economic Growth: Options for Uganda," CESifo Working Paper Series 5095, CESifo.
    17. Thorvaldur Gylfason & Gylfi Zoega, 2017. "The Dutch Disease in Reverse: Iceland's Natural Experiment," CESifo Working Paper Series 6513, CESifo.
    18. Leif Wenar, 2013. "Fighting the Resource Curse," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 4(3), pages 298-304, September.
    19. Wenar, Leif, 2016. "Blood Oil: Tyrants, Violence, and the Rules That Run the World," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780190262921.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sinha, Avik & Sengupta, Tuhin, 2019. "Impact of natural resource rents on human development: What is the role of globalization in Asia Pacific countries?," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 1-1.
    2. Oasis Kodila-Tedika, 2021. "Natural resource governance: does social media matter?," Mineral Economics, Springer;Raw Materials Group (RMG);Luleå University of Technology, vol. 34(1), pages 127-140, April.
    3. Friedrich Heinemann, 2021. "The political economy of euro area sovereign debt restructuring," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 32(4), pages 502-522, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thorvaldur Gylfason, 2017. "From Double Diversification to Efficiency and Growth," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 59(2), pages 149-168, June.
    2. Lashitew, Addisu A. & Werker, Eric, 2020. "Do natural resources help or hinder development? Resource abundance, dependence, and the role of institutions," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    3. Cockx, Lara & Francken, Nathalie, 2016. "Natural resources: A curse on education spending?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 394-408.
    4. Boschini, Anne & Pettersson, Jan & Roine, Jesper, 2013. "The Resource Curse and its Potential Reversal," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 19-41.
    5. Akram, Vaseem & Ali, Jabir, 2022. "Do countries converge in natural resources rents? Evidence from club convergence analysis," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    6. Yilanci, Veli & Aslan, Murat & Ozgur, Onder, 2021. "Disaggregated analysis of the curse of natural resources in most natural resource-abundant countries," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    7. Matata Ponyo Mapon & Jean-Paul K. Tsasa, 2019. "The artefact of the Natural Resources Curse," Papers 1911.09681, arXiv.org.
    8. Cai, Chunlin & Li, Ning, 2023. "The threshold effect of export sophistication on natural resources-trade diversification nexus," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 86(PA).
    9. Waqar Wadho & Sadia Hussain, 2023. "Ethnic diversity, concentration of political power and the curse of natural resources," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 40(1), pages 113-137, April.
    10. Ruba Aljarallah, 2021. "An Analysis of the Impact of Rents from Non-renewable Natural Resources and Changes in Human Capital on Institutional Quality: A Case Study of Kuwait," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 11(5), pages 224-234.
    11. Baena, César & Sévi, Benoît & Warrack, Allan, 2012. "Funds from non-renewable energy resources: Policy lessons from Alaska and Alberta," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 569-577.
    12. Amir Mousavi & Jeremy Clark, 2021. "The effects of natural resources on human capital accumulation: A literature survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(4), pages 1073-1117, September.
    13. Xu, Hangtian & Nakajima, Kentaro, 2013. "The Role of Coal Mine Regulation in Regional Development," PRIMCED Discussion Paper Series 45, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    14. Damette, Olivier & Kablan, Sandrine & Mathonnat, Clément, 2023. "Firms’ access to finance in resource-based countries and the financial resource curse," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 1031-1047.
    15. Cheng, Zhonghua & Li, Lianshui & Liu, Jun, 2020. "Natural resource abundance, resource industry dependence and economic green growth in China," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    16. Okada, Keisuke & Shinkuma, Takayoshi, 2022. "Transparency and natural resources in sub-Saharan Africa," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    17. Adrian Boos & Karin Holm‐Müller, 2012. "A theoretical overview of the relationship between the resource curse and genuine savings as an indicator for “weak” sustainability," Natural Resources Forum, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(3), pages 145-159, August.
    18. Antonakakis, Nikolaos & Cunado, Juncal & Filis, George & Gracia, Fernando Perez de, 2017. "Oil dependence, quality of political institutions and economic growth: A panel VAR approach," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 147-163.
    19. Ruba A. Aljarallah & Andrew Angus, 2020. "Dilemma of Natural Resource Abundance: A Case Study of Kuwait," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(1), pages 21582440198, January.
    20. Thorvaldur Gylfason & Gylfi Zoega, 2017. "The Dutch Disease in Reverse: Iceland's Natural Experiment," CESifo Working Paper Series 6513, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:lmu:muenar:62852. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tamilla Benkelberg (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.