Resource abundance: Blessing or curse? Comparative analyses of point and diffuse resources.

The objective of this study is to assess the short and long run effects of renewable and non-renewable resource rents on economic growth in Cameroon. Taking crude oil rents and forest resource rents as proxies for non-renewable and renewable resources respectively for the period 1977-2018, we employed the autoregressive and dynamic autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL/DynARDL) modelling frameworks to achieve the stated objective. Results from the ARDL model indicate that, in the short run, both the renewable and non-renewable resources have a positive and significant effect on economic growth but the point resource is more significant than the diffused. A clear disparity in results is however noticed in the long run. While the point resources show that natural resources are a curse to long run growth, the diffuse resources reveal that natural resources are a blessing to long run growth. From the DynARDL simulation, a negative shock of the point resources leads to a fall in economic growth whereas diffuse resource indicates an increase. This shows that point resources are more prone to the resource-curse thesis and diffuse resources to resource-bless thesis. Contingent on these findings, the Cameroon government should ensure a proper allocation of natural resource revenues especially point resource rents to growth-inducing investment or social overhead capital such as open new markets, transport infrastructures, and power sectors, so as to enhance growth and development.

Primal-dual approach to environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis: A demand and supply side analyses of environmental degradation.

The unavoidable negative effects of global warming have been a key if not the most important issue occupying policy makers in the world at large today. The much talked about green economy nowadays seeks to achieve sustainable economic growth and development without compromising environmental quality. The relationship between environmental degradation and economic growth is largely explained by the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis. By employing the basic postulation of the baseline EKC framework, this study proposes and tests the existence of a dualistic approach of the EKC hypothesis. Geometry is used to illustrate the proposed dualistic model. Meanwhile, the novel dynamic common correlation effect econometric technique is employed to test the existence of the dualistic EKC within a panel of 109 countries from 1995 to 2016. The outcome from the estimated models shows that, in the global sample, the existence of the dualistic U-shaped and N-shaped EKC hypothesis is validated. When the sample is split into subsamples based on income levels, the U-shaped EKC hypothesis is validated for lower-income and high-income economies meanwhile, the N-shaped dualistic EKC is mostly associated with high-income economies.