The natural resource curse has featured prominently in discussions on why many developing countries fail to grow. This curse takes on many flavours — adverse exchange rate effects, underinvestment in human capital and institutions, political conflict and violence, to name just a few. What about the effect on the financial sector? The financial sector has been shown to have a critical role in intermediating domestic savings into domestic investment and in allocating scarce resources effectively, with positive repercussions for economic growth (Levine, 2005). The financial system should thus serve as an important absorption tool for windfall gains, such as arising from natural resource rents. Does it fulfill this role? Previous work has shown that financial systems are less developed in more resource-rich countries (Beck, 2011), but this could be driven by demand, rather than by a supply-side related curse.
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