The Natural Resource Cure Quality of institutions?

Transcription

1 DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS Uppsala University C-level Thesis Author: Anna Wiström 1 Supervisor: Niklas Bengtsson Spring 2013 The Natural Resource Cure Quality of institutions? Abstract This study explores the natural resource curse and its possible cure via good institutional quality. In theory countries that are resource abundant are said to have slower economic growth than countries that are resource scarce. Earlier studies have shown that resource abundant countries only suffer from the resource curse if the resources are highly appropriable and if the institutional quality is low. If resource abundant countries instead have resources that are highly appropriable and if the institutional quality is high they will benefit from their resources. If a country has resource with low technical appropriability no negative effect on growth is expected. In this study several time periods are studied and it can be concluded that for earlier time periods the resource curse theory in general holds but for later time periods no negative effects of resource abundance on economic growth can be detected. Keywords: Natural resource curse, economic growth, development, appropriability, institutional quality JEL classification: N50, O13, O40, O57, P anna.wistrom@hotmail.com

2 Table of Content 1 INTRODUCTION PREVIOUS RESEARCH THEORY AND DATA THEORY DATA RESULTS MAIN RESULTS INSTRUMENTING FOR INSTITUTIONAL QUALITY WHY IS THERE NO RESOURCE CURSE BETWEEN 1990 AND 2010? ROBUSTNESS EXCLUDING OUTLIERS EXCLUDING OR INCLUDING VARIABLES EXCLUDING REGIONS EXCLUDING RICH OR POOR COUNTRIES DISCUSSION CONCLUSION REFERENCES APPENDIX

3 1 Introduction Why have Chile and Liberia had such different rates of economic growth for the last 30 years? And Singapore and Iran? Chile had a growth rate of 3.2 % per year and Liberia -3.2 % per year between 1980 and Singapore grew at a rate of 4.6 % per year and Iran -1.2 % per year between 1970 and One thing these four countries have in common is that they are abundant in fuel, ores or metals. 3 About 64 % of Chiles and Liberia s merchandise exports were ores and metals in 1980 and about 25 % of Singapore s and 90 % of Iran s merchandise exports were fuels in What makes these countries experience such different rates of economic growth? One thing that is different between the countries is the institutional quality. The quality of the institutions, governments and legal systems are in Chile and Singapore higher than in Liberia and Iran, making it possible for the two first countries mentioned to benefit from their resources while the two last cannot. To measure institutional quality in this study the International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) index is used. The ICRG index is combined of three components scaled to an o-1 variable where values close to 1 indicate good institutions and values close to 0 indicate bad institutions. The components included in the measure are quality of the bureaucracy, corruption in government and rule of law. The values for the countries mentioned above are 0.57 for Chile, 0.17 for Liberia, 0.89 for Singapore and 0.35 for Iran. In the previous examples the resources in question had a high level of technical appropriability. What happens with a country s growth if the resources have a low level of technical appropriability? In both Panama and Paraguay food export was about 70 % of merchandise exports and the ICRG values were 0.22 and 0.14 respectively in Still both countries grew at a rate of 2.3 % and 2.6 % per year between 1970 and Less appropriable resources do not always imply a resource curse even if the institutional quality in a country is low. 2 For sources and descriptions of all data and variables used in the study see Table 14 in Appendix. 3 The level of resource abundance will in this study be approximated by exports as share of merchandise exports. 3

4 The examples above demonstrate three aspects of the theory to be explored in this study. Firstly, the phenomenon that resource abundant countries have slower economic growth than resource scarce countries, known as the natural resource curse. Secondly, the resource curse can only be detected if the resources have high technical appropriability, for example fuel, ores and metals, and not if the resources have low technical appropriability, like food and agricultural products. Thirdly, if a country is abundant in highly appropriable resources it will only be cursed if the institutions in the country have low quality. The theory of the resource curse with these aspects has been explored in earlier research from for example Boschini et al (2007 and 2013) and Isham et al (2005). In this study different resources with different levels of appropriability will be explored to see if a natural resource curse can be found and if it can be reversed, as it has been in Chile and Singapore, by good institutional quality. Thus the main questions to be answered can be stated as: do resource abundant countries, depending on the level of appropriability of the resources, suffer from slower economic growth than resource scarce countries? If they do, can the curse be reversed via good institutions quality? This study will with some alterations follow that of Boschini et al (2007 and 2013). The two studies will be explained in more detail and the differences between this study and those of Boschini et al (2007 and 2013) will be stated in the following parts of the text. The remaining part of this paper is divided into the following sections: section two covers earlier research, section three explains the theory and data to be used, section four will present the main results, section five checks the robustness of the results, section six discuses the results and future questions to be answered and section seven concludes. 2 Previous research Some of the most cited works in the natural resource curse field are by Sachs and Warner (1995, 1999 and 2001). Using primary exports as a proxy for natural resources they found a negative relationship between exports and growth between 1970 and They did not however find that institutional quality could reverse the 4

5 curse. They explained the negative relationship with what is known as the Dutch Disease. The basic idea behind the Dutch Disease is that countries that gain a lot of rents from natural resources will have a crowding-out effect in other economic sectors. Sachs and Warner (1995) argued that positive externalities, for example learning-by-doing, are only present in the manufacturing sector and thus countries with a large natural resource sector and small manufacturing sector will not benefit from these positive externalities. This theory does not explain why Chile and Singapore can have such high growth rates even if they are natural resource exporters. More resent research has been trying to deal with the problem that the outcome of natural resource abundance is ambiguous. Isham et al (2005) for example found, in contrast with Sachs and Warner (1995, 1999 and 2001), that institutional quality do play a role in determining if a country will be cursed or not. They also found that it is only what they call point source resources, like fuel, ores, metals and plantation crops, that lead to the resource curse and not diffuse resources, like food and agricultural products. Mehlum et al (2006) found in line with Isham et al (2005) that a country will be cursed if the institutions are grabber friendly but not if the institutions are producer friendly. Given that a country is abundant in point source resources it will only be cursed if the institutions are grabber friendly, undermining the production sector in the economy that lead to long term growth. When instrumenting for institutional quality they found that natural resources only effect economic growth negatively via institutional quality and not directly. Sala-i-Martin and Subramanian (2003) used instrument variables as well when estimating the effect resource abundance have on growth. As Mehlum et al (2006) they found that resource abundance only effect growth via institutional quality. Pineda and Rodríguez (2010) argued against the resource curse. Using the Human Development Index (HDI, a measure that is calculated with components in three main fields; health, education and economic standard of living) they found that resource abundance, measured as net natural resource export per worker, have positive effects on HDI and especially its non-economic components. When 5

6 explaining why they use net exports instead of exports as the resource abundance approximation they criticize Sachs and Warner (1995) for not being consistent in their measuring. Two countries in the sample used by Sachs and Warner (1995) are measured as net exports instead of exports. The reason Sachs and Warner give is that the two countries, Singapore and Trinidad and Tobago, import a lot of resources and directly export them again and thus these countries will appear to be more resource abundant than they really are. In a study form Lederman and Maloney (2008), the study that Pineda and Rodríguez (2010) is largely based on, the results from Sachs and Warner (1995) were redone and is was show that the negative relationship goes away when using natural resource exports, and not net exports, for all countries. Pineda and Rodríguez (2010) and Lederman and Maloney (2008) therefore argue that net export should be used as the natural resource proxy for all countries to ensure that it is only the resources from within the country that are accounted for. In the studies this paper is largely based on, Boschini et al (2007 and 2013), they found that highly appropriable resources will lead to a resource curse and that good institutions can reverse the curse. In one section in each study they instrumented for institutional quality and found in contrast with Mehlum et al (2006) and Sala-i- Martin and Subramanian (2003) that resource abundance do have a direct negative effect on growth. 3 Theory and data In this section theory behind the resource curse and the data to be used will be explained. In the part explaining theory we will start with the basic resource curse theory, move on to appropriability, institutional quality and lastly putting appropriability and institutional quality together. After the theory has been described the data to be used will be explained, starting with the model and then explaining the variables included in the model. 6

7 3.1 Theory The basic resource curse theory The basic theory of the resource curse is that countries that are resource abundant have slower economic growth than countries that are resources scarce (Sachs and Warner 1995, 1999 and 2001, Boschini et al 2007 and 2013 and Mehlum et al 2006). This basic theory does not explain the ambiguous outcome of resource abundance Appropriability It is not only to what degree a country is resource abundant that matters when it is determined whether a country will be cursed or not, what type of resources a country has plays an important role as well. If the resources in a country are point source resources, like fuels and minerals, they will more likely cause slower economic growth in a country than if the resource are diffuse, like food and agricultural products (Isham et al 2005). Isham et al (2005, p. 3) describes point source resources as resources that are extracted from a narrow geographic or economic base. These point source resources will because of their narrow base be easier to control centrally and will thus with high probability lead to rent-seeking, corruption and conflicts that will harm the economic development while diffuse resources most likely will not lead to such behavior (Boschini et al 2007). To use the terminology from Boschini et al (2007 and 2013) point source resources are said to have high technical appropriability and diffuse resources low technical appropriability Institutional quality As mentioned above some researchers has pointed out the importance of institutional quality in determining if a country will be suffering from the resource curse or not (Boschini et al 2007 and 2013, Mehlum et al 2006). According to them a country that has good institutions and is resource abundant will benefit from its resources but a country that has poor institutions and is resource abundant will be cursed. Figure 1 below graphs ores and metals exports and growth between 1970 and Included in the graph to the left is half of the sample with the lowest institutional quality and included in the graph to the right is half of the sample with the highest institutional quality. The data indicates a negative relationship for ores and metals exports when 7

8 institutions are bad and a positive relationship when institutions are good. As can be expected from the theory outlined in Boschini et al (2007 and 2013) and Mehlum et al (2006) countries abundant resources will be cursed only if their institutional quality is low. Figure 1: Graphs showing growth and ores and metals exports Appropriability and institutional quality combined The two dimensions of the resource curse theory, appropriability and institutional quality, can be depicted as in Figure 2. Along the vertical line are examples of resources with different levels of technical appropriability. If the theory holds countries in the two lower corners of the figure will not be affected by their high amount of natural resources, countries in the upper right corner will benefit from their natural resources and countries in the upper left corner will suffer from the resource curse. 8

9 Figure 2: Two dimensions: appropriability and institutional quality 3.2 Data The model The basic regression model for testing the effects of resource abundance on economic growth used in this study follows that of Boschini et al (2007):!"#$%ℎ! =!!! +!!!"! +!!!!"#! +!!!"!!"#$! +!! (1) The dependent variable,!"#$%ℎ!, represents the average yearly growth rate in GDP per capita over the appropriate time period.!! is a vector including a constant and initial GDP per capita level, period average of openness and investment and dummy variables for regions (Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia).!"! is the proxy used for natural resource abundance,!"#$! stands for institutional quality and 9

10 !"!!"#$! is the interaction between natural resources and institutional quality. The index! represent the different countries included in the study. 4 There are some differences between this study and those of Boschini et al (2007 and 2013). One difference is that the regional dummy variables used in Boschini et al (2007) are Sub Saharan Africa and Latin America and in Boschini et al (2013) are Sub Saharan Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa instead of Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia that are used in this study. 5 Two other differences between the studies are that more resent data will be used and that different time periods will be considered. In the study of Boschini et al (2007) only one time period is studied, , and in the study from 2013 different start years for the time periods studied are used, 1965, 1975 and 1985, but only one end year, The time periods to be studied in this paper are , , , , and The proxies for natural resource abundance and the variables in the vector are measured in the beginning of each time period that is studied as to avoid reverse causality, where growth is affecting the explanatory variables. As in Boschini et al (2007 and 2013) the estimations are made using the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) method. When the measures for natural resources used in the regressions have high technical appropriability!! will be expected to be negative, indicating the resource curse,!! to be positive, indicating that good institutions are beneficial for growth, and finally!! to be positive. If the curse is to be reversed!! has to be larger in absolute value than!!. When the resources have low technical appropriability we will not expect any significant results for!! or!!. We still might se significant and positive results for!!, indicating that good institutions are good for growth independently of the amount or type of resources a country has. 4 See Table 13 in Appendix for a list of all countries included in the study. 5 Boschini et al (2013) states that the results are not sensitive for extra variables, for example regions, being included in the model. 6 All variables are calculated as five year averages to ensure that no particular year will have a crucial effect on the results. The year 1980 is for example the average between 1978 and

11 3.2.2 The variables In this study a variation of five measures used in Boschini et al (2013) are used to approximate resource abundance. The measures are taken from The World Bank (2013) and are agricultural, food, fuel and ores and metals exports as share of merchandise exports. Total exports are calculated as the sum of agricultural, food, fuel and ores and metals exports. The data used in Boschini et al (2013) are exports as share of GDP instead of as share of merchandise exports. Looking again at Figure 2 agricultural and food exports are located at the bottom half of the figure, indicating low technical appropriability, while fuel and ores and metals exports are located at the top half of the figure, indicating high technical appropriability. Total exports will capture the whole range of appropriability levels. Table 14 in Appendix describes what products are included in the different exports categories. In the results we will expect to see the resource curse most strongly when using ores and metals exports, some when using total or fuel exports. Agricultural products and food are less technically appropriable so we will not expect the curse to appear when using these two approximations. Institutional quality in this study is measured by the ICRG index. The three components of the ICRG that are used in this study are quality of the bureaucracy, corruption in government and rule of law. 7 Quality of the bureaucracy: This component is given a high value if the bureaucracy is somewhat independent of political pressure and change of political rule. Corruption in government: A high value is given if corruption is not present. Absence of corruption is essential if people or companies are to be willing to invest within the country. Rule of law: This variable measures how well the legal system works and how high the crime rate is in a country. If the legal system is efficient and the crime rate is low the country will get a high value. 7 There are more components in the original ICRG index but they are not used in thus study due to limited data availability. 11

12 The ICRG index is calculated as an average of these three components and is scaled to a 0-1 variable (Teorell et al 2011a). High values indicate good institutional quality and low vales indicate bad institutional quality. There are problems when measuring institutional quality. First, institutional quality is a question of subjectivity. Second, there has been suggested that institutional quality can affect the amount of natural resources found and extracted in a country or that the amount of natural resources can effect the institutional quality. Research has shown that the most likely way institutions and natural resources are correlated is that abundance in natural resources generate institutions with bad quality and that in turn will affect economic growth negatively (Sala-i-Martin and Subramanian 2003 and Mehlum et al 2006). A country with bad institutions might not provide the essential safety for natural resources to be found and extracted while a country with good institutions will provide the framework for people and companies to extract and use the resources efficiently. In this way good institutions will probably lead do more resources being found and extracted while bad institutions will lead to less resources being found and extracted (Sala-i-Martin and Subramanian 2003). 4 Results In the first part of this section the main results are presented. In the second part results are presented when instrumenting for institutional quality. In the main results no resources curse can be detected in or when using ores and metals exports, in the third part possible reasons for this absence are tested. 4.1 Main results The main results are presented in Table 1. Staring with total exports, if the theory of the resource curse is true we will expect to se some evidence of the curse when using this proxy. Looking at the results in Table 1 we can see that this is the case for only one time period, 1970 to 1990, where there is some indication of a negative relationship between resources and growth. According to theory abundance in agricultural exports should not be a source of a resource curse. Looking at the results we can see that there is no evidence of any 12

13 curse but rather the opposite, abundance in agricultural exports seem to be beneficial for growth when looking at the first three time periods. The interaction term is also significant for the first three time periods and is in absolute value larger than agricultural exports. The results indicate that agricultural export is beneficial for growth but if the institutions are good enough the positive effect of the exports will be reversed and agricultural exports will be negative for growth. We can see that institutional quality is beneficial for growth in all time periods except As with agricultural exports we do not expect any evidence for a resource curse for food exports. In the results we can se that food exports do not have any influence over growth for any of the time periods. Neither does the interaction term. The only significant variable is institutional quality for all time periods but the last, When using fuel exports as the resource abundance proxy we will expect some evidence of a resource curse. As with the results for food exports no evidence of a curse can be found in the regressions. Growth appears not to be explained by either fuel exports or the interaction between fuel exports and institutional quality. Good institutions seem to be beneficial for economic growth in all time periods but the last. For countries abundant in ores and metals exports we would expect evidence of a resource curse. Looking at the results we can see that large amounts of exports of ores and metals indeed have a negative effect on growth for the first four time periods. The interaction term is significant for the same time periods and is larger in absolute value. We can thus conclude that ores and metals exports have a negative effect on growth but with good enough institutions the curse will be reversed and ores and metals in combination with good institutions will be beneficial for economic growth. Institutional quality explains some of the growth in the time periods , , and In these periods better institutions will lead to faster economic growth. Looking at the explanatory power,!!, in the regressions for each time period we can see that for the first five periods the!! is around 50 % to 60 % while for the last time period the explanatory power is only about 25 % to 30 %. This indicates that the data in the first periods fit the model better than in the latest time period. In other words, 13

14 there is something else explaining economic growth in the period from 1990 to 2010 other than the variables included in the model used in this study. To summarize the results; evidence of the resource curse can only be detected in the regressions using total exports in and ores and metals exports in the first four time periods. Looking at food and fuel exports no relationship between exports and growth can be detected in any time period, either positive or negative. When using agricultural exports there appears to exist a resource blessing rather than a resource curse. Since the curse is almost exclusively present in the regressions using ores and metals exports as measure for natural resources the remaining part of the paper will present results for ores and metals exports only and, without loosing generality and saving space, the time periods 1970 to 1990 and 1990 to For results not presented in the text contact the author. 14

15 Table 1: Main results Total exports (1.714) (2.125) * (2.476) (1.309) (1.771) (1.413) Institutional quality (1.510) -0.4 (1.784) (1.965) (1.188) (1.5) (1.376) Interaction term (1.963) (2.356) (2.759) (1.686) (2.140) (1.805) N!! Agricultural exports 4.093* (2.1) 5.274** (2.384) 7.541** (3.013) (2.516) (2.420) (2.648) Institutional quality 2.438*** (0.637) 3.342*** (0.728) 4.621*** (0.906) 2.139** (0.812) 3.103*** (0.973) (1.429) Interaction term ** (2.309) *** (2.494) *** (3.282) (3.936) (4.530) (5.119) N!! Food exports (1.372) Institutional 2.235** quality (0.956) Interaction term (1.687) N !! Fuel exports (1.196) Institutional 1.944*** quality (0.3) Interaction term (2.2) N !! Ores and metals exports ** (1.519) Institutional quality (0.612) Interaction term 7.363** (2.985) N!! (1.496) 3.186*** (1.036) (1.842) (1.496) 2.473*** (0.752) (3.058) ** (1.6) 1.306* (0.6) 8.297** (3.403) (1.776) 4.523*** (1.244) (2.446) (2.124) 3.217*** (0.872) (3.989) *** (1.902) 1.759* (0.953) 8.819** (3.601) (1.610) 2.586*** (0.890) (1.943) (1.2) 2.562*** (0.938) (2.424) * (3.053) (0.741) * (5.897) (1.975) 3.392*** (1.093) -0.8 (2.290) (1.679) 3.519*** (1.229) -3.6 (3.245) (3.614) 1.796* (0.904) (7.324) (1.935) (1.280) (2.015) (2.180) (1.183) (3.458) (2.064) 2.317* (1.181) (4.145) Notes: Dependent variable is Growth. Robust standard errors in parenthesis. * significant at 10 % level, ** significant at 5 % level and *** significant at 1 % level. All regressions include a constant and control variables listed in the text (not shown). 15

16 4.2 Instrumenting for institutional quality As suggested above the amount of natural resources in a country can depend on the quality of institutions. Because of this correlation there might be a problem with biased and inconsistent estimates. To deal with this problem we will use the twostage least square (2SLS) method, instrumenting for institutional quality and the interaction term between the natural resource proxy and institutional quality with variables that are correlated with institutions but not with the error term. The variables used in Boschini et al (2007), and to be used in this study, are latitude, the interaction between the natural resource proxy and latitude and the fraction of people in the country that speaks a western European language. The results from the first stage regressions are presented in Table 5 in Appendix. We can see that the variables used as instruments are explaining some of the variation in the institutional quality measure and the interaction term. All three instruments are significant in at least one regression. The results from the second stage regressions are presented in Table 2 below. The main results from Table 1 for the corresponding time periods are also presented for comparison. We see that the results in the first time period do resemble that of the main results to some extent. The sings in front of the estimates are the same when using the two methods but the effects of the variables are larger when using OLS. Since the 2SLS method always gives larger standard errors than the OLS method the variables are not significant when instrumenting for institutional quality and the interaction term. The results for the second time period do not resemble that of the main results. When using the 2SLS method the estimates for ores and metals exports and the interaction term have the opposite signs from the estimates when using the OLS method, they are larger in absolute value and are not significant. Institutional quality is still positive, larger in absolute value and not significant. Since the estimates are not significant in either time period we can conclude that there is no evidence of a resource curse when instrumenting for institutional quality and the interaction term. The results are consistent with the findings of Sala-i-Martin 16

17 and Subramanian (2003), resource abundance have negative effects on institutional quality and through that on economic growth but abundance in natural resources do not appear to have any direct effect on economic growth. The results are not consistent with that of Boschini et al (2007 and 2013) where they find that the estimates when using the two estimation methods give roughly the same results. Table 2: Second stage regressions (2SLS) Ores and metals exports (3.183) Institutional quality (5.391) Interaction term (7.840) (OLS) *** (1.902) 1.759* (0.953) 8.819** (3.601) (2SLS) (15.919) (4.876) (30.250) N (OLS) (2.064) 2.317* (1.181) (4.145) Notes: Dependent variable is Growth. Standard errors in parenthesis. * significant at 10 % level, ** significant at 5 % level and *** significant at 1 % level. All regressions include a constant and control variables listed in the text (not shown). The!! values are not shown since they do not have any clear statistical meaning when using the 2SLS method. 4.3 Why is there no resource curse between 1990 and 2010? We have seen in the main results there is no resource curse to be found between 1980 and 2000 or 1990 and Focusing on the last time period this lack of relationship is also evident in Figure 3 that shows graphs with growth and ores and metal exports for the time periods and The fitted line in the graph to the left slopes downwards, indicating the curse, while the fitted line in the graph to the right is horizontal, indicating no relationship between ores and metals exports and growth. Why is there a negative relationship between growth and ores and meals exports in 1970 to 1990 but not in ? To see if there have been any drastic changes in the data between these two time periods descriptive statistics for several variables in the two time periods are shown in Table 3. There are some differences between the time periods that can be the reason for the disappearance of the resource curse in the later time period. Four of these will be more closely examined and, if possible, tested. 17

18 Figure 3: Graphs showing ores and metals exports and growth Firstly, looking at the variables growth and ores and metals exports we can see that the minimum growth was much lower between 1970 and 1990 than between 1990 and 2010 and the maximum value of exports was much higher in 1970 than What implications this can have will be discussed in section 6. Secondly, focusing on the variable institutional quality we can see that the minimum value of the ICRG index is larger in 1990 than The fact that the institutions in the world have become better can be one reason for the disappearance of the resource curse. But since the institutional measure was instrumented for in the previous section we can conclude that better institutions are not the reason for the lack of the resource curse in Thirdly, moving on to the variable initial GDP level we can see that the world in general has become richer. Both the mean and the minimum value have become higher since The results from running a regression for the time period between 1990 and 2010 but with the initial GDP level from 1970 instead of 1990 can be found in column 1 in Table 4. We can see the there is still no resource curse present in the time period and we can conclude that the fact that the world has become richer has not played a crucial role in the disappearance of the resource curse. 9 The actual year is 1984 but to make it logical and easy to follow in the text the year is written as

19 Fourthly, examine the variable average investment we see that the minimum value is larger for the later time period. Highly appropriable resources like ores and metals are dependent on investments and if the investments have become higher in the last 20 years this could be the reason for the absence of the curse. Running a regression with the average investment from 1970 to 1990 instead of tested this hypothesis. The results are presented in column 2 in Table 4. Looking at the results we see that average investment has not played a role in the disappearance of the resource curse. Finally there are some countries that only appear in the regression from 1990 to To see if there countries are the reason for the absence of the curse we run a regression for the time period and excluding these countries. The results are presented in column 3 in Table 4 and we can see that there is no resource curse present even if the countries listed are excluded. Table 3: Descriptive statistics Variable Time period Mean Standard deviation Growth Ores and metals exports Institutional quality Initial GDP level Average openness Average investments Minimum value Maximum value Observations 10 The countries are China, Kuwait, Malta, Oman, Papua New Guinea, Poland, Saudi Arabia and Suriname. 19

20 Table 4: Results testing why there is no curse between 1990 and 2010 (1) (2) (3) Ores and metals exports (0.020) (0.020) (1.972) Institutional quality 2.134** (0.952) 2.678** (1.058) 2.943** (1.111) Interaction term (0.043) (0.042) (4.088) N!! Notes: Notes: Dependent variable is Growth. Robust standard errors in parenthesis. * significant at 10 % level, ** significant at 5 % level and *** significant at 1 % level. All regressions include a constant and control variables listed in the text (not shown). All regressions are for the time period Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are excluded from the regressions in column 1 and 2 due to missing data. 5 Robustness The analysis of the main result shows that as a whole the theory about the resource curse holds for ores and metals exports for earlier years but not in the later time periods. When using the OLS method to estimate the equation some assumptions have to be fulfilled. For example the data should not include observations with extreme values or have omitted variables that explain the dependent variable. This section tests if the data used are sensitive to these assumptions being fulfilled. If the results do not change when for example excluding outliers or including new variables we can conclude that the results are robust. If the results are robust they are more reliable for further analysis and can be generalized to other time periods or to be generalized for all the countries in the world and not only the ones included in the regressions. This section largely follows that of Boschini et al (2007). 5.1 Excluding outliers Excluding very influential observations, so called outliers, is a method that can be used to make sure the observed results are true and not only dependent on a few unusually influential observations. One way to detect outliers is to calculate the DFITS index. An observation is normally counted as an outlier if the absolute value of 20

21 the DFITS index is larger than 2!/! where! is the number of variables, including the intercept, and! is the number of observations in the regression. Table 6 in Appendix presents the results when running the regressions without outliers. 11 In general the results follow that of the main results. Ores and metals exports and the interaction term are as in the main results significant for but not for For the last time period institutional quality is, as in the main results, significant. The results seem to be robust when excluding outliers. 5.2 Excluding or including variables The estimated coefficients in front of variables in a regression can alter if different variables are excluded or included from the model. Table 7 and 8 in Appendix presents results when initial GDP, average openness and average investment are excluded from the model in different combinations. Ores and metals exports and the interaction term are significant for but not and institutional quality is significant for some of the regressions in both time periods. It seems that the results are not very sensitive to excluding variables. Collier and Hoeffler (2002) and Boschini et al (2007) suggest that if a country has been in a conflict or civil war it can have had an effect on economic growth. The results when including dummy variables for war or civil war are presented in Table 9 in Appendix. We can see that none of the variables are significantly effecting growth in either time period. The estimates for ores and metals exports, the interaction term and institutional quality are close to those in the main results and we can conclude that the results are not sensitive to adding the variables war or civil war. 5.3 Excluding regions In the main results countries from the whole world is included but to see if the resource curse is general for the whole world or just a phenomenon located at some 11 The countries counted as outliers in are Bolivia, Brunei, Egypt, Iran, South Korea, Nicaragua and Turkey and the countries counted as outliers in are Brunei, Chile, China, Japan, Kuwait, Papua New Guinea, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago. 21

22 specific region regressions have been run excluding Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia respectively. The results are presented in Table 10 and 11 in Appendix. Ores and metals exports are not significant in either time period when Africa is excluded and but significant in both time periods when Latin America is excluded. Excluding the Middle East or Asia does not seem to have any effect on the main results. These results indicate that much of the curse is located in Africa. 5.4 Excluding rich or poor countries As with excluding different regions it can be interesting to see if the resource curse is mostly a problem for rich or poor countries. By excluding the richest or poorest 25 % of the countries we can see if the rich countries or the poor countries are the ones mostly cursed. Results can be found in Table 12 in Appendix. When excluding the poorest 25 % of the sample ores and metals exports and the interaction term are not significant in any time period but when excluding the richest 25 % of the sample ores and metals exports and the interaction term are significant in all periods. The interaction term is significant for both time periods when the rich countries are excluded but not significant in either time period when the poor countries are excluded. We can from this conclude that much of the resource curse originates from the poor countries. 6 Discussion The results from this study are to large extent in line with earlier studies. As in the studies of Boschini et al (2007 and 2013) highly appropriable resources do cause a resource curse while other resources do not. In contrast with these studies the coefficients in this paper are smaller. This could be because the variables used are not exactly the same. Another difference in the results is that when instrumenting for institutional quality the results in Boschini et al (2007 and 2013) are close to the OLS estimates while the results in this study are not close to those obtained with the OLS method. The results from this study are more in line with the results of Sala-i-Martin and Subramanian (2003). The reason for the difference in results can be because Boschini et al (

23 and 2013) did not include the resource abundance proxy in the first stage regression when instrumenting for institutional quality while the proxy is included in the first stage regression in the study of Sala-i-Martin and Subramanian (2003) and this study. In this study no resource curse could be detected in the regression using fuel exports as a proxy for natural resources even if it is counted as a resource with quite high technical appropriability (Boschini et al 2007 and Figure 2). In Boschini et al (2013) fuel exports are significant for some time periods but not others. The alteration in variables used as natural resource proxies for fuel can be the reason for this difference in results. While this study has answered some questions it has been the source of new questions as well. A finding that is consistent throughout the study is that no resource curse can be detected for the time period between 1990 and The tests complete in section 4.3 rejects this lack of significance to be the consequence of better institutions, higher initial GDP levels, larger average investments or the different countries included in the regressions. It can be seen in Table 3 that both resource abundance and growth in the world are less spread in than and this lack of variation in the variables could be the reason for the absence of the curse. The lowest growth rates in are higher than that in and the most resource abundant country was not as resource abundant in 1990 as in This means that there are no real resource losers left in the world. In the countries included in this study the countries with the lowest growth in combination with high exports of ores and metals between 1970 and 1990 were Zambia and Liberia with growth rates of -3.1 % and -3.8 % and ores and metals exports of 98 % and 75 % respectively. In the countries were Bolivia and Papua New Guinea with both having growth rates of 1.4 % and ores and metals exports of 46 % and 58 % respectively. What is the reason for the disappearance of the resources losers? Why are the growth rates higher now than 20 years ago? What happened to the countries that almost exclusively exported natural resources? These are some of the questions still to be answered. One thing that could be done differently in future research is that net exports could be used instead of exports as the natural resource proxy, as argued in Pineda and 23

24 Rodríguez (2010) and Lederman and Maloney (2008). The values used in this study could be misleading and not really show the resource abundance within a country but rather the amount of resources handled at the ports of a country. One other thing that could be done differently is that the same countries should be used in all the regressions. This to make sure that the difference in results between time periods or types of resources is not dependent on what countries are included in the regressions. To be able to keep as many observations as possible this was not done but as data for more countries gets available with time this might not be a problem in the future. 7 Conclusion The results from this study can be summarized in the following statements: Indications of a resource curse can be detected in , , and when using ores and metals exports as an approximation of natural resource abundance. No relationship between natural resources and growth can be found when approximating natural resources with total, food or fuel exports. A positive relationship can be detected when using agricultural exports as a proxy. Agricultural exports thus seem to bring a resource blessing rather than a resource curse. In all regressions where the proxy for natural resources is significant the curse, or blessing, can be reversed with good enough institutions. The results seem to be similar to those of Sala-i-martin and Subramanian (2003) when instrumenting for institutional quality and the interaction term with latitude, the interaction between the natural resource proxy and latitude and the fraction of people in a country speaking a western European language. Resource abundance appears to influence institutions negatively and that in turn will influence growth negatively. Natural resources do not seem to have a direct negative effect on growth. The lack of resource curse in does not appear to be caused by the fact that the lowest level of institutional quality has become higher, that the world has 24

25 become richer, that the average investment has become higher or that some countries only appear in the regressions for the time period The results seem robust when exclude outliers and include or exclude different variables. When excluding Africa or the poorest countries the resource curse disappears indicating that much of the curse is located in Africa and the poorest countries in the world. The main questions to be answered in this study were: do resource abundant countries, depending on the level of appropriability of the resources, suffer from slower economic growth than resource scarce countries? If they do, can the curse be reversed via good institutions quality? The answers found in the results of this study are that resource abundant countries do suffer from slower economic growth than resource scares countries in the earlier time periods studied but not in the later time periods. This negative effect can only be detected if the resources are highly appropriable and will only effect countries with low institutional quality. If the institutions are good enough we can conclude that countries will benefit from their resources. 25

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