Is it possible that excessive reliance on natural resources affects saving and investment in a way that retards economic growth? - and thus, in the long run, the level of output per capita. This paper reviews the literature, explores the data and compares and contrasts the explanatory power and interplay of natural resources and civil liberties, our proxy for institutional variables currently under scrutiny in the literature. We propose that natural resource dependence may be viewed as an exogenous factor that impedes economic growth and investment as well as institutions, even if we stress that natural resource abundance may be good for growth. Copyright 2006 The Authors Journal compilation 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent, nonprofit limited liability company (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung) supported by the Deutsche Post AG. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its research networks, research support, and visitors and doctoral programs. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. The current research program deals with (1) mobility and flexibility of labor, (2) internationalization of labor markets, (3) welfare state and labor market, (4) labor markets in transition countries, (5) the future of labor, (6) evaluation of labor market policies and projects and (7) general labor economics. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available on the IZA website (www.iza.org) or directly from the author. Using data from the British Household Panel Survey from 1991 to 1996, the authors investigate the impact of union coverage on work-related training and how the union-training link affects wages and wage growth for a sample of full-time men. Relative to uncovered workers, union-covered men are more likely to receive training and also receive more days of training. In addition, union-covered men experience greater returns to training, and coveredtrained workers face a higher wage growth. While some of these findings have been found in previous studies, others are new. The wage results, in particular, suggest a rethinking is warranted of the conventional view that union wage formation in Britain reduces the incentives to acquire work-related training.JEL Classification: J24, J31, J41

We analyse the voting pattern in the June 23 rd referendum on the continued participation of the United Kingdom in the European Union and evaluate the reasons for the results. We find that output, education and the share of older people at the regional level can explain attitudes towards immigrants and the European Union. Thus, regions where GDP per capita is low, a high proportion of people has low education, a high proportion is over the age of 65 and there is strong net immigration are more likely to be apprehensive of the European Union, be suspicious of immigrants and not want them as neighbours and, most importantly, to vote for Brexit. The fear of immigration does not seem to be fully justified in terms of the literature on the labour market effects of immigrants in the UK. Using the British Election Study we find similar results. Thus negative attitudes towards immigration and EU enlargement are correlated with voting for Brexit using data on individuals.

FROM THE MID-1970s to the mid-1980s, most of the industrial economies of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) suffered a sharp slide in economic activity, as measured both by employment in relation to the labor force and by male labor force participation in relation to the working-age population. This decline sparked new structuralist modeling of the determinants of employment and supplied an empirical record for testing the models. Some consensus has now emerged on the main mechanisms and causal forces behind the deep slump. 1 In the 1990s, however, structural recovery became evident in many OECD countries. Structural unemployment in Ireland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom appears to have improved in the first half of the 1990s and again in the second half.