Curse or Blessing: natural resources and economic growth - comparison of the development of Botswana, Nigeria, Norway and Canada in early 21st century

This thesis seeks to verify the concept of so-called resource curse at the beginning of the new millennium. The theoretical part defines the symptoms of the alleged curse, curse transmission channels and criticism of the concept. Compared to other studies dealing with the theme of the resource curse this work is not focused on just one transmission channel. The practical part verifies several hypotheses established by comparing research papers on impacts of natural resources. The validity of the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis, Dutch disease symptoms and a negative impact on political institutions (inclination toward authoritarianism, high level of corruption, high government spending, low efficiency of economic and political decision-making and low investment in education) is verified. For the analysis have been selected two African countries (Nigeria and Botswana) and two advanced countries (Canada and Norway). The last part of this thesis provides policy implications. The results confirm the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis for selected commodities in the long term and some of the symptoms of Dutch disease at the beginning of the new millennium. Hypotheses regarding the impact on the political institutions have not been confirmed, since the results varied across the countries. The high vulnerability of the countries to movements in commodity prices was found.