Dutch disease
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Dutch disease is an economic phenomenon in which the discovery and exploitation of natural resources deindustrializes a nation's economy. In the given scenario, the value of the country's currency rises (making manufactured goods less competitive), imports increase, non-resource exports decrease. The Dutch Disease becomes an actual disease if there is something special to the activities resource extraction crowds out, such as learning by doing or economies of scale. The phemomenon was first observed in the Netherlands in the 1960s, when large reserves of natural gas in the North Sea were first exploited. There is now a substantial body of research on the topic.
The term appears to have been coined in by The Economist in an article in its 1977 November 28 issue on page 82 and 83.
In more recent history, the opening of the BTC pipeline in Baku, Azerbaidzhan allowing for oil exports valued at 80% of all exports seems to have created another case of the Dutch disease.
See also
External links
- Test of Dutch Disease Hypothesis (http://econwpa.wustl.edu:8089/eps/it/papers/0305/0305001.pdf)
- Addressing the Natural Resource Curse (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/economics/discpapr/DP0203-15.pdf)de:Holländische Krankheit