The Resource Curse in the context of 'Socialism of the 21st Century'

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject Business economics - Economic Policy, grade: 1,33, Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH, language: English, abstract: Ecuador and Venezuela, two Latin American OPEC member states, experienced a socioeconomic upheaval with the windfall petroleum revenues beginning in the 1970s. The oil bonanzas, however, negatively affected the development in the two countries, which show minimal economic growth and political instability throughout the last thirty years. The paradoxical phenomenon can be explained with the resource curse theory. This paper starts with determining the extent of the resource curse and its forms of appearance in both countries. In a second step, it investigates good governance trends in Ecuador and Venezuela in recent years, using th.......