The resource curse without natural resources: Expectations of resource booms and their impact

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Author(s)
Frynas, JG
Wood, G
Hinks, T
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2017
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Many resource-rich countries have experienced a range of negative economic and political effects from natural resource extraction, often lumped together as the ‘resource curse’. This article investigates to what extent expectations of future natural resource booms in São Tomé e Príncipe and Madagascar led to ‘resource curse’ effects, even though these countries did not experience the expected booms. It finds that both countries experienced resource curse effects as a result of future expectations, including volatile economic growth and eroded governance. The article demonstrates that shared aspirations and expectations alone ...
View more >Many resource-rich countries have experienced a range of negative economic and political effects from natural resource extraction, often lumped together as the ‘resource curse’. This article investigates to what extent expectations of future natural resource booms in São Tomé e Príncipe and Madagascar led to ‘resource curse’ effects, even though these countries did not experience the expected booms. It finds that both countries experienced resource curse effects as a result of future expectations, including volatile economic growth and eroded governance. The article demonstrates that shared aspirations and expectations alone may make for material political and economic outcomes even when they become visibly divorced from reality. Thus, there is much more to resource curse effects than simply the product of the material extraction of natural endowments. At a time of extremely volatile prices for primary commodities, and the relatively easy availability of investment capital and credit to support speculative ventures that in turn incentivize resource hype, it is likely that a growing number of countries may suffer the malign effects of a resource curse without natural resource extraction.
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View more >Many resource-rich countries have experienced a range of negative economic and political effects from natural resource extraction, often lumped together as the ‘resource curse’. This article investigates to what extent expectations of future natural resource booms in São Tomé e Príncipe and Madagascar led to ‘resource curse’ effects, even though these countries did not experience the expected booms. It finds that both countries experienced resource curse effects as a result of future expectations, including volatile economic growth and eroded governance. The article demonstrates that shared aspirations and expectations alone may make for material political and economic outcomes even when they become visibly divorced from reality. Thus, there is much more to resource curse effects than simply the product of the material extraction of natural endowments. At a time of extremely volatile prices for primary commodities, and the relatively easy availability of investment capital and credit to support speculative ventures that in turn incentivize resource hype, it is likely that a growing number of countries may suffer the malign effects of a resource curse without natural resource extraction.
View less >
Journal Title
African Affairs
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal African Society. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivs licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial reproduction and distribution of the work, in any medium, provided the original work is not altered or transformed in any way, and that the work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com.
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This publication has been entered into Griffith Research Online as an Advanced Online Version.
Subject
Human Resources Management
Studies in Human Society