Do African resource rents promote rent-seeking at the expense of entrepreneurship?

This paper examines the relationship between natural resource rents and new business formation (a critical measure of entrepreneurship) using a panel dataset of 28 African countries covering the period 2002–2014. The paper finds robust evidence that nations with high resource rents (i.e., resource rents exceeding 30% of GDP) significantly exhibit less entrepreneurial activity. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that high resource rents significantly promote rent-seeking behavior at the expense of entrepreneurship. Policies that reward productive entrepreneurship and reduce incentives for rent-seeking behavior are therefore important for reversing this negative relationship in African countries with high natural resource-derived income.