ECON+ Interview With Otaviano Canuto – Natural Resources Abundance: Blessing or a Curse?

Otaviano Canuto, Executive Director at the World Bank, once again is with ECON+ to continue this series of interviews on the global economy. This time, we tackle the topic of Natural Wealth and its perception of either being a blessing or a curse. We base the chat on a few World Bank notes written by Otaviano and his colleagues. Otaviano explains that an abundance of natural resources is intuitively expected to be a blessing. Nonetheless, it has been argued for some decades that large endowments of natural resources—oil, gas, and minerals in particular—may actually become more of a curse, often leading to slow economic growth and redistributive struggles. The findings are in alignment with the view that there is no clear deterministic evidence of natural resource abundance as a curse or a blessing; therefore, the effect on a country depends on other determinants. As usual, an enriching interview led by Luisa Porritt, with Pedro Sousa contributing to the discussion.

World Bank Notes:

Canuto, O., and M. Cavallari. 2012. “Natural Capital and the Resource curse”,
Economic Premise, n.83, May. http://bit.ly/NFYcTH

Brahmbhatt, M., O. Canuto, and E. Vostroknutova. 2010. “Natural
Resources and Development Strategy after the Crisis.” The World Bank.
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTPREMNET/Resources/C5TDAT_101-118.pdf

Brahmbhatt, Milan; Canuto, Otaviano; Vostroknutova, Ekaterina. 2010.
“Dealing with Dutch disease”. Economic premise ; no. 16. Washington,
DC: World Bank.
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/794871468161957086/Dealing-with-Dutch-disease

 

Interview available for streaming or download on Soundcloud:

And for streaming only on Mixcloud:

Credits:
Music –
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