studies have explored new links between natural resources and growth, controlling for the strengths of each economy. for example, arezki and van der ploeg ( 2007 ) find that this negative relationship between natural resource abundance and growth is heavily affected by the country ’ s openness to international trade. they find that, the more open the economy, the less likely for natural resources to have a negative contribution to growth. therefore, trade openness can change the curse into a blessing. meanwhile, mehlum et al. ( 2006 ), using the same data as sachs and warner ( 1997 ), include an interaction between the quality of institutions and natural resource abundance to examine its effect on growth. they find that the critical element behind the natural resource curse is bad institutions. in other words, if the country has good institutions, natural resources allow them to grow faster. 1 the interaction with the human capital endowment is also important. bravo - ortega and de gregorio ( 2005 ) state that, whenever natural resources draw the scarce human capital away from growth favoring activities, the development of natural resources might reduce growth. thus, countries with high endowment of human capital can more than offset the negative effect of natural resource abundance on growth. still, while growth can be slower, abundant natural resources do result in higher income, which is what ultimately matters from the standpoint of the welfare of the population. finally, it is worth to make the distinction between the abundance of and the dependence on natural resources. this issue has been analyzed in cerny and filer ( 2006 ), who find that natural resource dependent countries are the ones associated with low economic growth, not natural resource abundant ones. 2 when studying the case of chile, it can be argued that there is no evidence of the problems that associate natural resource abundance with bad economic performance. on the one hand, we can observe that our country is more and more open to international trade ( figure 2 ). this integration not only brings benefits because of the traditional gains from trade based another closely related work is boschini et al. ( 2003 ). these authors claim that the natural resource curse depends not only on the quality of institutions but also on the characteristics of the resources. specifically, whether it is easy to obtain large earnings in a short period of time from having control over the resource. defining dependence as the percentage of natural capital in total capital ( i. e., natural, physical, and human ) and abundance as the amount of per capita commodity exports

, partly due to difficulties and delays in the collection of information used in the construction of official statistics. actually, the task of gathering february ’ s information – carried out in march – has already proven problematic. in the medium term, the dynamics of demand, economic activity and output gaps will depend not only on usual concerns about the world economy, but also on the size and specific characteristics of reconstruction efforts. as a working assumption, the board considers that the additional investment as a consequence of the catastrophe will be equivalent to nearly one percentage point of gdp in 2010. this effect will be concentrated in the second half of this year and will increase towards 2011. this considers both new investment and reallocated resources from other projects. the materialization of these investments will be favoured by their high marginal productivity and because part of the loss in net capital stock was insured. in the case of the public sector, according to announcements from the executive, the baseline scenario considers that the structural deficit of 2009 was 1. 2 % of gdp and that structural fiscal balance will be attained towards the end of the current administration ’ s term. budgetary reallocations this year will amount to about us $ 700 million, while the rebuilding of destroyed public infrastructure will be spread out over four years. as a working assumption, the board estimates that the burden of financing the public and private reconstruction efforts will be distributed equally among its various sources. considering the economic situation leading up to the disaster together with its short and medium term effects, the board estimates that during this year gdp will grow between 4. 25 % and 5. 25 %. this range is somewhat lower than was forecast in december. the downward revision for this year is based on the fact that the immediate economic effects of the earthquake and tsunami will exceed the increases generated by the reconstruction efforts ( table 1 ). in the baseline scenario of this report, the sum of the effects of the catastrophe, the changes in conjunctural data and other specific elements shapes a scenario where inflation will converge to 3 % sooner than was forecast in december. the change in the medium - term inflation scenario is determined by the effects of the earthquake and tsunami on productive capacity and by the persistence and magnitude of a potential contraction in private consumption. in the baseline scenario, annual cpi variation will exceed 3 % in the second half of this year, standing around 4 % for a few months. it will later fluctuate around 3 % through 2011 until the end of the relevant projection horizon, which is