Journal Articles

Conditioning the “Resource Curse” : Globalization, Human Capital, and Growth in Oil-Rich Nations

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Since the 1990s it has become conventional wisdom that an abundance of natural resources, most notably oil, is very likely to become a developmental “curse.” Recent scholarship, however, has begun to call into question this apparent consensus, drawing attention to the situations in which quite the opposite result appears to hold, namely, where resources become a developmental “blessing.” Research in this vein focuses predominantly on the domestic political and economic institutions that condition the growth effects of natural resource wealth. Less attention, however, has been paid to whether or how the context of economic integration has conditioned the domestic political economy of natural resource development. This article specifically addresses this theoretical disjuncture by arguing first that the developmental consequences of oil wealth are strongly conditioned by domestic human capital resources, which, where sizeable, make possible the management of resources in ways that encourage the absorption of technology and development of valuable new economic sectors. In the absence of robust human capital formation, however, the archetypal “resource curse” is likely to result. The authors argue moreover that international economic integration further amplifies the divergence between these outcomes by simultaneously raising the growth-enhancing effects of large stocks of human capital and by directly facilitating economic growth. Analysis of global data on growth and oil abundance (1979-2007) supports their main hypotheses that natural resource wealth can be either a “curse” or a “blessing” and that the distinction is conditioned by domestic and international factors, both amenable to change through public policy, namely, human capital formation and economic openness.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Comparative Political Studies

Call Number

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Publisher

Thousand Oak : sage publisher., 2011

Collation

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Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

00104140

Classification

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Content Type

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Media Type

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Edition

Vol. 44 no. 6, June 2011.pp. 747-770

Subject(s)

Globalization
Development
Resource curse
Oil
Human capital
Conditioning the Resource Curse

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