The resource curse, rule of law and accountability in African countries: a dynamic panel analysis

We investigate the resource curse phenomenon using the African Governance Index that ranks African countries according to their governance quality. First, we allow countries to endogenously select in good- and bad-governance groups. Secondly, using an Arellano-Bond dynamic panel-data estimation, we analyze the effect on bad-governance countries of the endowment taking into account (i) that institutional quality today depends on institutional quality in recent years and (ii) that the resource endowment today will produce a lagged effect on institutional quality. Our findings confirm the existence of the resource curse problem.