Impact of institutions and ICT services in avoiding resource curse: lessons from the successful economies

Countries endowed with abundant natural resource have not shown similar economic growth. Thus, the study investigates why some resource-abundant countries are not successful while others are. By using the fixed effect panel data model, the study examines the role of institutions and ICT services in overcoming the resource curse problem. The study employed panel data from World Bank database for the period of 25 years (1995–2019). The result shows that natural resource abundance and institutional performance indicators have significant negative effect on economic growth in the case of some group of economies, confirming presence of resource curse and institutional curse. However, these economies have the potential to escape the resource curse provided that they able to build human capital, adopt ICT services and build quality of institutions. Therefore, policies that firmly promote building human capital, quality institutions, adoption and usage of ICT services in resource curse economies could help them to escape the curse.