Resource abundance as an indicator of economic development in selected countries

Abstract

The efficiency of resources is a current issue that can be of great interest to anyone, especially since it is often associated with economic performance, at both - micro and macro level. Therefore, it can be useful to evaluate the resource availability of countries and to understand how a country’s economic development is connected with its resource abundance. Our study examines whether the availability of resources can be viewed as an indicator of the economic development of a particular country by analysing the correlation between the total resources rent, as calculated by the World Bank, and the gross domestic product and its development in 45 countries worldwide. We found that natural resources rents are linked to both GDP per capita and GDP growth, leading often to strong positive or negative correlations. The particular cases need to be further addressed, by looking into additional parameters on country and regional level.