results in resource rich countries. They point to the challenges associated with volatility as a chief culprit.

Resource booms and busts provide us with an interesting time period over which to analyze the economic performance of resource rich countries as they face both the blessing of increased revenues and investments, while also riding the tiger of commodity price volatility. By contrasting their experience over such periods with resource-poor neighbors, we can build a picture of comparative performance, benchmarked using peers who are similar in many other respects. This paper builds on other comparative studies that came before. For example, Bravo-Ortega and Gregorio (2005) considers the comparative experiences within Scandinavia and Latin America. Olter (2007) and Bates et al. (2008) review the experiences of various African countries. More recent works like the IMF (2012) policy paper examines the growth in developing resource-rich countries during the rising commodity prices period of the 2000s, and Ross (2012) discusses the growth performance of oil-rich economies during a similar period.

Indeed, Warner (2015) finds little evidence to suggest that the resource boom led to sustained increases in non-resource GDP. Looking beyond Africa, he notes that some Gulf states were able to finance migration-facilitated economic expansion, however African countries fared worse. Warner examines 18 boom countries, including five from SubSaharan Africa: Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Mauritania, Mozambique and Zambia. In all cases, he finds no statistically significant difference in growth during the boom period compared to each country’s counter-factual non-boom time period.

This study contributes to this literature with a comparative analysis of resource-rich SubSaharan Africa compared to less resource endowed countries in the region to investigate the comparative economic performance and draw lessons for policymakers as they enter a new period of rising commodity prices.

Our conclusions are stark. While economic performance among resource-rich countries was strong during the commodity price boom period – as one might expect – growth rates and other economic indicators sharply declined once resource prices fell. Furthermore, during this decade of booming revenue we find limited evidence of re-investment of those revenues into building sustainable assets for the future. In other words, countries consumed the boom, rather than used it to transform their economies. This supports our conclusion that many resource-rich countries in the region squandered their “once in a generation” opportunity for economic transformation. Our results are consistent with other studies of the same commodity price boom and the economic performance of resource-rich countries in Africa and beyond (Venables 2016; Warner 2015).

We offer some reflections and policy insights based on these findings. Consistent with earlier work we conclude that resource-richness doesn’t not condemn countries to a fate of weak economic performance. Instead, we find that policy choices matter. As such the experiences of resource-rich countries can serve as useful guides to the policy missteps and successes made by those who came before. We build on previous work such as by van der Ploeg and Venables (2011) who discuss the earlier challenges resource abundance and 3