Abstract EN:

As illustrated by the “Human Development Index” published by the United Nations and used by the World Bank, a society’s progress is often judged not just by its income, but also its human capital outcomes in education and health. It is therefore not surprising that, just as a large number of studies have asked whether natural resource dependence or abundance harms or helps a society’s income, a growing number of papers have separately asked if they harm or help a society’s accumulation of human capital. To date, however, no one has surveyed this body of research. This is what we attempt to do in the dissertation. This new survey then is followed by several empirical analyses and conceptual models to check whether the abundance/dependence of natural resources hurt/help or does not affect the accumulation of human capital. While the literature typically focuses on a national-level analysis of the resource curse, chapter two of this dissertation investigates the impact on the human capital of the abundance of petroleum resources in 28 provinces of Iran from 2000 to 2014. It also contributes to the literature by distinguishing between upstream and downstream impacts i.e. whether the effects of the oil and gas industry on human capital are associated mostly with extraction (upstream) or refining and distribution (downstream) activities. Second, the approach of the dissertation inclined from macro to the microeconomic view in chapter three. Although a growing body of literature studies the HCIF’s (Human Capital-Intensive Firms) boundary and governance, few try to focus on these firms when the abundance of resources is involved in the economy. Similarly, in resource curse literature much has been said about the natural resource effects on human capital, however, fewer studies have been conducted for the immigration of the talented students in the resource abundance countries and the potential impacts this might have on human capital. This gap inspired me to study the effect of oil rent, brain drain, and good governance on human capital in a set of countries listed in the Natural Resource Governance Index (NRGI) Report. 3. Overall, all the empirical analysis of this dissertation significantly confirms the curse of natural resource abundance/dependence for the accumulation of human capital, measured by different indicators of health and education. For example, regarding the case of Iran, the empirical results show that apart from the global crowding effect of natural resources on human capital, the provinces involved in both downstream and upstream oil activities have significantly lower levels of human capital compared to both oil-free provinces and provinces involved only in downstream oil activities. This suggests a double resource curse. We also find the same negative effects for a cross-section of 81 NRGI countries by estimating a system of multiple linear regression models, by using ordinary least squares (OLS). Another interesting result of this dissertation was the negative impacts of brain drain on the accumulation of human capital. Contrary, we find that the determinants of good governance show a significant and positive impact on human capital accumulation, indicating the important role of good governance in resource-abundant countries to harness the curse of oil abundance. Finally, the positive and significant coefficient of interaction term -in chapter four- between natural resource governance and oil rent (as a proxy for resource dependence) implies that natural resource good governance is one key to avoid the negative effect of resources on the accumulation of human capital.