The Varieties of Resource Experience : Natural Resource Export Structures and the Political Economy of Economic Growth

By J. Isham, M. Woolcock, L. Pritchett, G. Busby. 2005

914 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Many oil; mineral; and plantation crop–based economies experienced a substantial deceleration in growth following the commodity boom and bust of the 1970s and early 1980s. This article illustrates how countries dependent on point source natural resources (those extracted from a narrow geographic or economic base; such as oil and minerals) and plantation crops are predisposed to heightened economic and social divisions and weakened institutional capacity. This in turn impedes their ability to respond effectively to shocks; which previous studies have shown to be essential for sustaining rising levels of prosperity. Analysis of data on classifications of export structure; controlling for a wide array of other potential determinants of governance; shows that point source– and coffee and cocoa–exporting countries do relatively poorly across an array of governance indicators. These governance effects are not associated simply with being a natural resource exporter. Countries with natural resource exports that ...

Subfields: Building and Construction, Economics and Econometrics

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Citations in the corpus

The resource curse revisited and revised (2006, positive): “Following earlier work [10,26], we first perform a series of estimations to analyze whether resource abundance (RA) in fact has the commonly reported negative effect on institutional quality (I).”
Resources for Sale: Corruption, Democracy and the Natural Resource Curse (2008, background): “If resource rents are easily appropriable by an established elite, they may trigger bribes and distort policies.4 Evidence suggests that “point source resources” like oil and certain mineral resources are associated with “bad” institutions (Isham et al. 2005, Bulte et al. 2005).”
Resource curse: An analysis of causes, experiences and possible ways forward (2007, background): “Isham et al. (2005) have drawn on this distinction to explain why all natural resource exporters have suffered substantial economic slowdowns since the 1980s.”
Trade openness and economic growth : a cross-country empirical investigation (2008, methodology): “Islam (1995) and others further adapt the framework of Mankiw, Romer and Weil (1992) for panel estimation. However, as we noted in Chapter 1, the accumulation of physical and human capital, population growth and technological progress are proximate determinants of economic growth. In other words, ev”
Resource Curse: New Evidence on the Role of Institutions (2014, background): “…institutional quality could be very effective in nullifying the curse through avoidance of rent-seeking behavior (Auty, 2001), reducing corruption (Isham et al., 2005; Robinson, Torvik, & Verdier, 2006), lowering the risk of violent civil conflict (Collier & Hoeffler, 2005), and accelerating…”
Finance and Oil. Is there a Resource Curse in Financial Development (2011, neutral): “Cross-country regressions have confirmed this negative relationship between natural resource abundance and the rule of law (Norman, 2009), control of corruption (Papyrakis and Gerlagh, 2004) and overall institutional capacity (Isham et al., 2005).”
Measuring state capacity: Theoretical and empirical implications for the study of civil conflict (2010, background): “Recent research on economic growth indicates, however, that certain types of resource endowments facilitate capture by the state through marketing boards or direct procurement (Isham et al., 2005).”
The use (and abuse) of governance indicators in economics: a review (2008, background): “Isham et al 2005 KKZ (each one individually), ICRG (Rule of Law, Bureaucratic Quality), Civil and Political Liberties, CPIA from World Bank (plus instruments such as settler mortality and language).”
Resource rents and inclusive human development in developing countries (2021, background): “Several studies argue that natural resource wealth negatively impacts on institutional quality as it prevents the development of institutional reforms thereby retarding economic development (Leite and Weidmann, 1999; Isham et al., 2005; Norman, 2009).”
Do Natural Resources Depress Income Per Capita? (2011, neutral): “Countries with large exports of natural resources have worse growth performance than those with little or no natural resources (Sachs and Warner, 1997), especially if they are point-source resources (Isham et al., 2005).”
Defying the Resource Curse: Explaining Successful State-Owned Enterprises in Rentier States (2010, neutral): “3 chaudhry 1997; isham et al. 2005; Karl 1997; Vandewalle 1998.”
Export-Oriented Populism: Commodities and Coalitions in Argentina (2009, background): “Instead of focusing on the “peripheral subcoalition” and its ability to supply rural votes to the broader populist alliance, I examine how the rural sector provides fiscal 3 One exception is Isham et al. (2005).”
Rule of Law and the Resource Curse: Abundance Versus Intensity (2009, background): “Leite and Weidmann (1999); Gylfason et al. (1999); Gylfason (2001), and Isham et al. (2005) investigate relationships between resource flows and indicators related to institutions, investment, and education, finding that point-source resource flows matter for characteristics that affect growth, in”