In the early 1970s, Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso, former Venezuelan oil minister
and founder of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), said:
Ten years from
is money market safe and now, twenty years from
get money quick and now, you will see, oil brings
us ruin. It’s the devil’s excrement.
The “resource curse,” as
is money market safe it has come to be known, is real. Studies have
shown that the economies of resource-poor countries such as
mutual funds money market Hong Kong,
Singapore, and
is money market safe as well South Korea have consistently outperformed those of resourcerich
countries such as
stigum"s money market Ghana, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and
is money market safe as well Zaire.
One of the extreme examples of this curse is Nigeria. Living standards in 2000
were essentially the same as
unsecured subordinated notes in 1965. The outrage is that during those 35
years, Nigeria earned $350 billion in oil revenues. Almost all of this wealth
ended up in the pockets of corrupt politicians.
The resource curse turns the Malthusian logic on its head [see the essay
on page 95, “There Are (Almost) No Limits to Economic Growth—How Technology
and Productivity Have Delivered Stunning Improvements in Living
Standards”]. In the case of the Malthusian trap, a fixed supply of natural
resources—especially agricultural output—constrains economic and
is money market safe as well demographic
growth. In the case of the resource curse, plentiful natural resources
actually get in the way of rapid economic development.
Why is natural resource wealth a “curse”? Let us count the ways.
The Dutch disease. This is the most benign of the problems associated
with natural resource wealth. It is named after
cnn money news and the economic challenges
that faced the Netherlands after
is money market safe and the discovery of massive natural gas reserves
in the late 1950s. Countries that are rich in oil, gas, and
money market saving account as well other
minerals usually run large trade surpluses—the value of their exports is
usually much higher than the value of their imports. This almost always
leads to an appreciation of the currency of the countries in question. A
stronger currency typically makes nonresource exports (e.g., manufactured
goods) more expensive, which, in turn, retards industrial growth. Moreover,
in resource-rich economies, there are strong incentives to move resources
away from
is money market safe and goods-producing to extractive industries (e.g., mining
or drilling). Since the manufacturing sectors employ more human capital
and technology than the resource sectors, the Dutch disease is usually
bad news for long-term growth.