Corruption loves company : the interactive effect of corruption and resources on economic growth

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on September 12, 2012).The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.Thesis advisor: Dr. Jonathan KrieckausIncludes bibliographical references.M.A. University of Missouri--Columbia 2012."May 2012"The resource curse has become one of the more studied comparative political economic phenomena over the last twenty years. Here, the role of corruption as a conditioning effect on the resource curse is explored. I argue that corruption modifies the impact of natural resources on economic growth; at higher levels of corruption, the effect of resources on growth becomes more negative. I empirically test this proposition over two ten-year periods from 1984-2003 using a new measure of natural resources, which accounts for resource abundant and dependent countries. Contrary to conventional wisdom, I find more resources are not associated with slow growth. Moreover, I find only marginal support for my theory, with only the effect of metal resources on growth being conditioned by corruption. These findings indicate that when examining the effect of resources on growth we must pay special attention to (1) the metric employed, (2) the type of resource examined, and (3) the potential for conditioning effects