Resumen de Assessing the Resource Curse Question: A Case of Crude Oil Production in Nigeria
This research attempted to investigate the effects of oil production on the performance of the Nigerian economy, with a view to either accepting or rejecting the resource curse hypothesis (which states that countries with abundance of natural resources, such as crude oil, tend to grow at a rather sluggish pace compared to their counterparts with fewer resources). In doing this, time series data spanning between 1980 and 2015 (which included gross domestic product [GDP], oil revenue, expenditure on health and education, gross fixed capital formation, net trade, political instability, corruption, etc., extracted from World Development Indicators [WDI], Central Bank of Nigeria [CBN] Statistical Bulletin, and World Governance Indicators [WGI]; used to proxy economic performance, crude oil production, human capital development, capital formation/accumulation, trade openness, and institutional qualities) were assessed.
An econometric approach was applied, with emphasis on the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Bound Test technique to cointegration (for its capacity of using variables, their lags as well as the lags of other variables in the series, endogenously; its general-tospecific framework and its adequate lag-order selection capacity).
The findings showed that generally, crude oil abundance has positive effects on the Nigerian economy, however, the resource curse hypothesis was found to be present, and had been transmitted by institutional factors such as corruption, weak rule of law, government ineffectiveness, political instability/violence & terrorism and so on. It was suggested, amongst other things, that institutions and institutional quality should be strengthened and conscious efforts at diversifying the economy should be considered a matter of urgent importance, if the full benefits of crude oil abundance are to be accessed
