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Income Inequality and Natural Resources

Bergner, Philipp LU (2016) NEKN01 20161
Department of Economics
Abstract (Swedish)
The observation that countries highly endowed with natural resources often struggle with undesirable economic (e.g. low growth) and social problems has produced a large body of literature on the so-called resource curse over the last decades. One possible relationship that has been investigated is, whether resource abundance affects income inequality. This has been scrutinized to a much lesser extent than the effect on growth, and moreover, no agreement has been reached concerning the direction of the effect, given that it exists. This paper uses the Standardized World Income Inequality Database, the largest and probably most comparable dataset of Gini values, to determine the effect of resource abundance on income inequality. It
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The observation that countries highly endowed with natural resources often struggle with undesirable economic (e.g. low growth) and social problems has produced a large body of literature on the so-called resource curse over the last decades. One possible relationship that has been investigated is, whether resource abundance affects income inequality. This has been scrutinized to a much lesser extent than the effect on growth, and moreover, no agreement has been reached concerning the direction of the effect, given that it exists. This paper uses the Standardized World Income Inequality Database, the largest and probably most comparable dataset of Gini values, to determine the effect of resource abundance on income inequality. It
dinstinguishes between a pure effect of resource abundance and an effect of resource intensity/dependence, a differentiation that has probably not received enough attention in the empirical resource curse literature in general. I examine whether resource abundance or resource intensity influences income inequality and whether the effect depends on the quality of institutions, which might turn a resource curse into a resource blessing. I find that neither resource abundance nor resource dependence influences income inequality significantly and that there is no effect of natural resouces that depends on the level of institutional quality. (Less)
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author
Bergner, Philipp LU
supervisor
organization
course
NEKN01 20161
year
type
H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
subject
keywords
Inequality, institutional quality, point resources, resource curse, SWIID
language
English
id
8890838
date added to LUP
2016-09-09 14:01:29
date last changed
2016-09-09 14:01:29
@misc{8890838,
  abstract     = {{The observation that countries highly endowed with natural resources often struggle with undesirable economic (e.g. low growth) and social problems has produced a large body of literature on the so-called resource curse over the last decades. One possible relationship that has been investigated is, whether resource abundance affects income inequality. This has been scrutinized to a much lesser extent than the effect on growth, and moreover, no agreement has been reached concerning the direction of the effect, given that it exists. This paper uses the Standardized World Income Inequality Database, the largest and probably most comparable dataset of Gini values, to determine the effect of resource abundance on income inequality. It
dinstinguishes between a pure effect of resource abundance and an effect of resource intensity/dependence, a differentiation that has probably not received enough attention in the empirical resource curse literature in general. I examine whether resource abundance or resource intensity influences income inequality and whether the effect depends on the quality of institutions, which might turn a resource curse into a resource blessing. I find that neither resource abundance nor resource dependence influences income inequality significantly and that there is no effect of natural resouces that depends on the level of institutional quality.}},
  author       = {{Bergner, Philipp}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Income Inequality and Natural Resources}},
  year         = {{2016}},
}