Paradox of Plenty

The resource curse, also known as the paradox of plenty, refers to the paradox that countries with an abundance of non-renewable natural resources (like fossil fuels and certain minerals), tend to have less economic growth, less democracy, and worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources. This is hypothesized to happen for many different reasons, and there are many academic debates about when and why it occurs. Most experts believe the resource curse is not universal or inevitable, but affects certain types of countries or regions under certain conditions.

The idea that resources might be more of an economic curse than a blessing began to emerge in debates in the 1950s and 1960s about the economic problems of low and middle-income countries. The term resource curse was first used by Richard Auty in 1993 to describe how countries rich in mineral resources were unable to use that wealth to boost their economies and how, counter-intuitively, these countries had lower economic growth than countries without an abundance of natural resources. An influential study by Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner found a strong correlation between natural resource abundance and poor economic growth. Hundreds of studies have now evaluated the effects of resource wealth on a wide range of economic outcomes, and offered many explanations for how, why, and when a resource curse is likely to occur. While "the lottery analogy has value but also has shortcomings", many observers have likened the resource curse to the difficulties that befall lottery winners who struggle to manage the complex side-effects of newfound wealth.

Scholarship on the resource curse has increasingly shifted towards explaining why some resource-rich countries succeed and why others do not, as opposed to just investigating the average economic effects of resources. Research suggests that the manner in which resource income is spent, system of government, institutional quality, type of resources, and early vs. late industralization all have been used to explain successes and failures.

The IMF classifies 51 countries as “resource-rich.” These are countries which derive at least 20% of exports or 20% of fiscal revenue from nonrenewable natural resources. 29 of these countries are low- and lower-middle-income. Common characteristics of these 29 countries include (i) extreme dependence on resource wealth for fiscal revenues, export sales, or both; (ii) low saving rates; (iii) poor growth performance; and (iv) highly volatile resource revenues.

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