engleski

The Resource Curse in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Reality Corroborated by the Empirical Evidence

The abundance of natural resources is usually considered the blessing for the countries that own such resources. However, such wealth is often associated with poverty and a slower economic growth. This phenomenon is called the resource curse, and it shows that most countries that are rich in natural resources have markedly reduced economic growth and development, and it shows that the wealth of natural resources adversely affects their economies, although it is intuitively expected to be the opposite i.e. that such wealth would have a positive impact on the country’s economic development. This paper, a product of the mentor-student joint effort, studies the paradox of natural resources and its most common channels through which it is converted from a blessing into a curse. The purpose of this study is to make conclusions about the existence of the natural resource curse, and to show the way or channel through which the wealth of natural resources becomes a blessing or a curse. The research was conducted in the countries where the largest part of exports in total merchandise exports were exports of natural resources, and such countries were selected from the region of Sub-Saharan Africa given that in this region natural resource curse is the most present. In the paper the export of natural resources is analyzed and compared with a GDP per capita of those countries, the dependence of these countries on the prices of resources is analyzed as well as diversity of their economies, the quality of institutions, and the presence of corruption. The data, which were used for analyzing, are statistical data collected by the World Bank, and the data from the other statistical sources related to such matters (BP and Transparency International).

natural resources ; natural resources curse ; economic growth ; development ; institutional quality

Rad je produkt suradnje studentice-diplomantice i profesora-mentora prilikom izrade diplomskog rada.