Effect of abundance of natural resources on governance quality in developing countries

In the past decade, the subject of the natural resources’ curse was raised due to the poor performance of countries having rich natural resources compared to countries with poor natural resources. It was expected that countries with abundant natural resources would have better performance. Nevertheless, empirical evidence indicated the contrary results. It seems abundance of natural resources in these countries is a curse rather than a blessing. Using panel data, this research investigates the correlation between the abundance of natural resources and good governance indicator as a measure of institutional development in developing countries during 1996- 2014. The robust statistical evidence confirms the negative impact of abundance of natural resources on the overall governance quality (average of six indicators of good governance) and good governance indicators in developing countries. The estimation results suggest that the logarithm of GDP per capita, tax revenues, and grants have positive effects on the governance quality, but logarithm of the population has significant negative effect on dependent variable. In addition, a breakdown of developing countries into two groups of countries with high per capita income and low-income indicated that countries with high per capita income have been more successful in channelizing resource rent towards better governance, economic growth and development.