Linking natural resources to slow growth and more conflict

The appreciation for natural resources as a driver of economic development has undergone a dramatic change in the past decades. Although an abundance of resources was generally perceived as advantageous until the 1980s, an influential literature emerged in the 1990s that reached seemingly opposite conclusions. The phrase "natural resource curse" was coined and, perhaps because of its paradoxical connotation, caught on in both academic and policy circles.