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1、The Relative Richness of the Poor Natural Resources Human Capital and Economic Growth Claudio Bravo Ortega World Bank and Department of Economics Universidad de Chile Jos e De Gregorio Banco Central de Chile Comments welcome Abstract Are natural resources a blessing or a curse In this paper we prese
2、nt a model in which natural resources have a positive eff ect on level of income and a negative eff ect on its growth rate The positive and permanent eff ect on income implies a welfare gain There is a growth eff ect stemming from a composition eff ect However we show that this eff ect can be off se
3、t by having a large level of human capital We test our model using panel data for the period 1970 1990 We extend the usual specifi cations for economic growth regressions by incorporating an interaction term between human capital and natural resources showing that high levels of human capital may ou
4、tweigh the negative eff ects of the natural resource abundance on growth We also review the historical experience of Scandinavian countries which in contrast to Latin America another region well endowed with natural resources shows how it is possible to grow fast based on natural resources JEL Class
5、ifi cation J24 O41 O57 Q00 We would to thank specially to Maurice Obstfeld for his comments that helped greatly improve our empirical work We also would like to thank Pranab Bardhan A De Michaelis Julian di Giovanni Andr es G omez Lobo Botond K oszegi Patricio Meller Ted Miguel David Romer J P Stijn
6、s and the participants of the Seminars at the Universidad de Chile University of California at Berkeley and at the World Bank and Central Bank of Chile joint conference on Natural Resources and Growth for their helpful comments Claudio Bravo Ortega would also like to thank CIEPLAN and the Ministry o
7、f the Economy for their support and hospitality at diff erent stages of this research Address The World Bank MSN I 8 801 1818 H Street N W Washington DC 20433 E mail cbravoortega worldbank org E mail jdegrego bcentral cl Public Disclosure AuthorizedPublic Disclosure AuthorizedPublic Disclosure Autho
8、rizedPublic Disclosure Authorized WPS3484 1Introduction During the last decade many economists have returned to the familiar question of whether there is any relationship between a country s abundance of natural resources and its rate of economic growth or level of income Few however have asked unde
9、r what circumstances natural resources can serve as an engine of growth Moreover the discussion has been limited to the study of the eff ects on growth only instead of looking also at the level of income even though the latter is more closely related to welfare In this paper we analyze both eff ects
10、 We show that the discovery of natural resources leads to a decline in the rate of growth but also to an increase in income that raises welfare The economic history of the last two centuries shows mixed evidence in this re gard During the nineteenth century and the fi rst half of the twentieth centu
11、ry several countries underwent development experiences in which natural resources seem to have been the engine of economic growth The most notable cases include Australia Scan dinavia and the United States See Wright 1990 and Blomstrom and Meller 1990 among others However it is hard to fi nd success
12、ful experiences of such development in the second half of the twentieth century Indeed in many countries the natural resources sector has been blamed for the underdevelopment or slow growth of the economy This lack of variation in experiences of course limits our ability to use these more recent dat
13、a to analyze the whole potential variety of actual experience with natural resources and development The mainstream literature on economic growth has focused on technical change and on the accumulation of physical and human capital largely disregarding the in teraction between these two factors with
14、in diff erent economic structures The main exception has been the research on the eff ects of openness on economic growth Ed wards 1997 This situation has generated a conceptual gap in our understanding of the impact of the productive structure on economic growth During the 1970s many economists stu
15、died the macroeconomic eff ects and changes in the productive structure resulting from a shock to the natural resources sector the so called Dutch disease 1Nevertheless this conceptual framework explains only the real appreciation of the currency and the process of factor reallocation that ac 1On th
16、e literature on Dutch disease see for example Neary and Van Wijnbergen 1986 1 companies it without deriving long run implications for economic growth However the idea behind the long run eff ects of the Dutch disease is that the real appreciation that results from a natural resources boom is detrimental to export led growth and development To understand the eff ects of Dutch disease on economic growth it is necessary to identify the long run mechanisms that link shocks to the natural resources s
