Author Archive

The past months seemed to me like FutureChallenges was leading a double life. Feeding the “old” website with content in order to keep it running and at the same time creating the new one and finally uploading lead articles, blogposts, videos and so on to the new website. For you […]

Ayman Abdul Nour on CNN. read more

The notion of the resource curse suggests that countries with large caches of natural resources often perform worse in terms of economic growth, social development, and good governance than other countries with fewer resources. The theory posits that countries depending on oil or other extractive industries for their livelihood are […]

The paper presents a comparative analysis of the resource-rich transition economies of Mongolia and the southern republics of the former Soviet Union. For Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, the ability to earn revenue from cotton exports allowed them to avoid reform. Oil in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan was associated with large-scale corruption, but […]

This paper compares the developmental dynamics entailed by China’s engagement in the South American and African extractive sectors. It argues that China’s growth and investment have strengthened the position of resource-endowed countries in the international economy, revitalizing resource industries and improving terms of trade for commodities. Concurrently, the expansion of […]