It would be a major error to take the decade of the 1970s as the prototype for minerals-based development. The resource curse hypothesis seems anomalous as development economics, since on the surface it has no clear policy implication, but stands as a sad prediction. Minerals are not a curse at all in the sense of inevitability; the curse, where it exists, is self-fulfilling. Needless to say, policies and institutions have to be framed to local circumstances, country by country. But with good intentions and innovative thinking, there is no reason why resource-rich countries need fall prey to the curse.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.