The Resource Curse. Literature Review
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35319/lajed.202645622Keywords:
Natural resource curse, resource dependence and economic growth, dutch disease, institutional quality and rent-seeking, economic complexity, energy transitionAbstract
This paper analyzes how countries abundant in natural resources exhibit lower economic growth than countries with scarce resources. A systematic literature review was conducted, defining three theoretical frameworks: (1) macroeconomic models of Dutch disease and Hotelling-Hartwick rules that explain the deterioration of the productive structure; (2) institutional approaches that emphasize rent-seeking and state weakness; and (3) structuralist perspectives that reformulate the paradox as a pattern of extractive accumulation. Empirical evidence distinguishes a first generation of studies that documents robust negative correlations between resource dependence and growth, from a more recent second generation that challenges this relationship through improved measures of abundance, advanced econometric techniques, and differentiation by resource type. The analysis emphasizes that the resource curse is not deterministic but contingent on institutions, price volatility, and productive structure. The paper also incorporates emerging debates on economic complexity (Hausmann et al., 2014), energy transition, the carbon curse, and the China effect (Li, 2023), which reconfigure the resource curse debate in the twenty-first century context. It highlights the need to broaden the focus from GDP to wider dimensions of development: distributive equity, conflict, environmental sustainability, and the well-being of local communities.
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