World Citizen: The Norway Model for Exorcising the Resource Curse

If you're looking for a good example of an oxymoron, or at the very least of a counterintuitive situation, nothing works better than the famed "resource curse." The idea that great natural wealth might in fact contribute to keeping a country poor has captured the public imagination precisely because it helps explain a phenomenon that is one of the great paradoxes of our time: Countries blessed with fabulous riches are often also cursed, perhaps inevitably, with grinding poverty.

But the phenomenon with the catchy title deserves a closer, critical look, because recent evidence suggests that the potion for breaking the devilish hex has already been found. ...