Is Oil Nationalization for the Nation? The Causal Nature of Institutional Impacts and Economic Hindrances of the “Resource Curse”

This thesis examines the theory of the “oil resource curse” and how structural, demographic, and economic variables presented by previous scholars and academics do not fully unpack the narrative and mechanisms of how the “resource curse” is developed. Different oil wealthy nations around the world have varying levels of development. Why? Adding to the existing literature of the Resource curse and Institutions, my hypothesis remains that through institutions that history has developed, mechanisms, such as oil nationalization lead to different varieties of the economic resource curse. Using a most-difference case scenario in a historical analysis, statistical and empirical data will provide robust evidence for the cases of Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Norway to prove the variations of the resource curse.