The Political Resource Curse Redux

TL;DR

This paper revisits the Political Resource Curse using new data and econometric methods to better understand whether resource windfalls benefit society or have adverse effects.

Contribution

It introduces a revised analysis of the Political Resource Curse with updated data and employs advanced econometric techniques like regression discontinuity and difference-in-difference.

Findings

Resource windfalls may not always benefit society.

New econometric evidence challenges previous conclusions.

Policy implications for resource management are discussed.

Abstract

In the study of the Political Resource Curse (Brollo et al.,2013), the authors identified a new channel to investigate whether the windfalls of resources are unambiguously beneficial to society, both with theory and empirical evidence. This paper revisits the framework with a new dataset. Specifically, we implemented a regression discontinuity design and difference-in-difference specification