About the project
Many resource-intensive economies are subject to a ‘resource curse’ that condemns them to slow growth at best and poverty at worst. At the same time there are a number of resource-based economies which are among the world richest with high welfare levels. The project analyses the difference in innovation in various countries and resource based industries in order to understand why some resource based economies have been successful.
Background
The empirical evidence suggests that there is no general „resource curse‟. Some resource-based economies succeed in developing while other have mixed success or fail in different degrees. The project has four major hypotheses to account for these differences:
- First, that successful RBEs (Resource-based economies) are capable of generating innovation-based growth within the resources sectors themselves
- Second, that successful RBEs are capable of generating upstream and downstream industries based on resources and resting on major programmes of technological innovation
- Third, that successful RBEs are capable of channeling the revenues from resource booms into productive investment in non-resource industries
- Fourth, that all of the above capabilities rest on the creation of growth-enhancing economic institutions
Cooperation
- The Australian Innovation Research Centre at the University of Tasmania, Australia (project leader: Professor Keith Smith)
- The Innovation Research group at the Royal Technical College in Stockholm, Sweden (project leader: Professor Staffan Laestadius)
- The Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture at the University Of Oslo, Norway (Project Leader: professor Olav Wicken)