Natural resource rents and internal conflicts: Can decentralization lift the curse?

Mohammad Reza Farzanegan, Christian Lessmann and Gunther Markwardt

Economic Systems, 2018, vol. 42, issue 2, 186-205

Abstract: We study how natural resource rents affect the risk of internal conflict within countries and how the federal structure of countries influences this relationship. Natural resource abundance may induce excessive rent-seeking and thus increase the risk of internal conflict. Fiscal and political decentralization as an institutional arrangement for rent-sharing and political codetermination of regions within a country may limit the destructive effect of natural resource rents on internal stability. Using cross-country and panel data from more than 90 countries covering the period 1984–2004, we find evidence that natural resource rents indeed increase the risk of internal conflict, but this relationship is significantly mitigated by political decentralization.

Keywords: Natural resources; Risk of conflict; Decentralization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H77 P48 Q34 Q38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0939362518300931
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Natural-Resource Rents and Internal Conflicts - Can Decentralization Lift the Curse? (2013)
Working Paper: Natural-resource rents and internal conflicts - Can decentralization lift the curse? (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecosys:v:42:y:2018:i:2:p:186-205

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecosys.2017.05.009

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Systems is currently edited by R. Frensch

More articles in Economic Systems from Elsevier Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().