Natural Resource Abundance, Human Capital and Economic Growth in the Petroleum Exporting Countries

Growth literatures indicate that human capital, education and technology progress are effective factors on economic growth. Empirical studies present that natural resource abundance have an important role on economic growth in natural-resource-rich countries. This paper investigates the relationship natural resource abundance, human capital and economic growth in two groups of petroleum exporting countries: namely A) Major petroleum exporters B) Other petroleum exporters. The paper first, investigated the relationships between related variables by cross section method and then the proposed model is tested by panel data for the period 1970-2004. Findings showed that physical investment and openness have positive impact on economic growth, and resource abundant and government expenditure inversely related with economic growth, but human capital have a different impact in two sample of the paper; so that in first group of countries, human capital have a negative relationship with economic growth while it has a positive relation with economic growth in second group. It is concluded that human capital can be main factor to explain slow growth of resource-rich countries. Abundant of natural resource in this countries and bad usage of natural resource can be cause of negative relationship between human capital and economic growth. In other hands, countries that are rich in mineral and oil neglect the developing of their human resources by devoting inadequate attention and expenditure to education. So these countries have lower growth rate with respect to others.