Rents from Natural Resources and Relations to Knowledge Economy in Arab Countries

Abstract

As some of the Arab countries are already facing the post-oil era in relation to the trends taking place in mining and in the oil and gas industries, with future possibilities of exhaustion of oil and gas reserves, diversification of economic activities has been emerging in some of these economies. However, the creation of new portfolios has not been expanded outside the traditional spectrum of economic activities. Besides that, governments and of public sovereign funds are still playing an important role both domestically and internationally, implying that rents from natural resources are still promising sources for economic development. This chapter addresses a series of issues related to how rents are driving the development path in relation to access of most world countries to the gains from the new economy. It also shows how knowledge variables have been related to the rents obtained from natural resources. Finally, the hypotheses in relation to natural resources as a curse to knowledge development are tested in the present chapter.