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Page count: 54

To test for the existence of the "curse" of natural resources-as well as the presence of these and other mechanisms of causation-requires data and the use of proper estimation techniques. [...] The literature of the last 15 years about the "curse" of natural resources was sparked by empirical efforts in the early 1990s (Barro, 1991) to test endog- enous growth theory, the proposition that economic growth depends on endogenously determined factors such as the level of education and the nature of economic policies (Craft, 1998; Barro and Sala-i-Martin, 1995) as opposed to exogenous inputs [...] Easton and Walker (1997) found that changes in economic freedom have a significant impact on the steady-state level of income even after the level of technology, the level of education of the workforce, and the level of investment are taken into account. [...] The authors used meta- analysis of 45 different studies published over the last decade and concluded that "regardless of the sample of countries, the measure of economic free- dom, and the level of aggregation, there is a solid finding of a direct positive association between economic freedom and growth" (2006: 19). [...] Then, they examined the impact of the level of corruption (where corruption was endogenously determined), initial income, exports of natural resources as a percentage of GNP, trade openness, investment as a share of GDP, terms of trade, rule of law, a dummy for sub-Saharan Africa, commodity-price variability in Africa, and commodity-price variability in the rest of the world on economic growth.