More money can make you poorer: that is why the resource curse is also sometimes known as the Paradox of Poverty from Plenty.īack in the 1990s, John Christensen was the official economic adviser to the British tax haven of Jersey. The startling idea was that all this money flowing from natural resources could make their people even worse off than if the riches had never been discovered. (Some mineral-rich countries, including Norway, admittedly seem to have escaped the curse.) Crucially, this poor performance wasn’t only because powerful crooks stole the money and stashed it offshore, though that was also true. They called it the resource curse.Īcademics had worked out that many countries with abundant natural resources seemed to suffer from slower economic growth, more corruption, more conflict, more authoritarian politics and more poverty than their peers with fewer resources. Around this same time, economists were beginning to put together a new theory about what was troubling countries like Angola.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |