Editing Resource curse (section)

== Criticisms ==
A 2008 study argues that the curse vanishes when looking not at the relative importance of resource exports in the economy but rather at a different measure: the relative abundance of natural resources in the ground. Using that variable to compare countries, it reports that resource wealth in the ground correlates with slightly higher economic growth and slightly fewer armed conflicts. That a high dependency on resource exports correlates with bad policies and effects is not caused by the large degree of resource exportation. The causation goes in the opposite direction: conflicts and bad policies created the heavy dependence on exports of natural resources. When a country's chaos and economic policies scare off foreign investors and send local entrepreneurs abroad to look for better opportunities, the economy becomes skewed. Factories may close and businesses may flee, but petroleum and precious metals remain for the taking. Resource extraction becomes the "default sector" that still functions after other industries have come to a halt.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Linking Natural Resources to Slow Growth and More Conflict |first1=C. N. |last1=Brunnschweiler |first2=E. H. |last2=Bulte |journal=Science |year=2008 |volume=320 |issue=5876 |pages=616–617 |doi=10.1126/science.1154539 |pmid=18451286|s2cid=153387158 }}</ref>

A 2008 article by Thad Dunning argues that while resource revenues can promote or strengthen authoritarian regimes, in certain circumstances they can also promote democracy. In countries where natural resource rents are a relatively small portion of the overall economy and the non-resource economy is unequal, resources rents can strengthen democracy by reducing economic elites' fear of ceding power since social welfare policies can be funded with resource rents and not redistribution.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Crude Democracy: Natural Resource Wealth and Political Regimes|url=https://archive.org/details/crudedemocracyna00dunn|url-access=limited|last=Dunning|first=Thad|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2008|isbn=978-0521730754|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/crudedemocracyna00dunn/page/n45 22]}}</ref> Dunning proposes Venezuela's democratic consolidation during the oil boom of the 1970s as a key example of this phenomenon.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Crude Democracy: Natural Resource Wealth and Political Regimes|url=https://archive.org/details/crudedemocracyna00dunn|url-access=limited|last=Dunning|first=Thad|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2008|isbn=978-0521730754|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/crudedemocracyna00dunn/page/n52 29]}}</ref>

A 2011 study argues that previous assumptions that oil abundance is a curse were based on methodologies which failed to take into account cross-country differences and dependencies arising from global shocks, such as changes in technology and the price of oil. The researchers studied data from the World Bank over the period 1980–2006 for 53 countries, covering 85% of world GDP and 81% of world proven oil reserves. They found that oil abundance positively affected both short-term growth and long-term income levels.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Does Oil Abundance Harm Growth? |first1=Tiago |last1=Cavalcanti |first2=Kamiar |last2=Mohaddes |first3=Mehdi |last3=Raissi |journal=Applied Economics Letters |year=2011 |doi=10.1080/13504851.2010.528356 |volume=18 |issue=12 |pages=1181–1184|s2cid=155042827 }}</ref> In a companion paper, using data on 118 countries over the period 1970–2007, they show that it is the volatility in commodity prices, rather than abundance per se, that drives the resource curse paradox.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Commodity Price Volatility and the Sources of Growth |first1=Tiago |last1=Cavalcanti |first2=Kamiar |last2=Mohaddes |first3=Mehdi |last3=Raissi |journal=Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1112 |year=2011 |ssrn=1846429 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |title=Institutions and the Volatility Curse |first1=Weishu |last1=Leong |first2=Kamiar |last2=Mohaddes |journal=Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1145 |year=2011 |url=http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/dae/repec/cam/pdf/cwpe1145.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110928105035/http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/dae/repec/cam/pdf/cwpe1145.pdf |archive-date=2011-09-28 }}</ref>