Has Bolivia׳s 2006-12 gas policy been useful to combat the resource curse?

The resource curse is a phenomenon regularly evoked in the economic literature on under-development. Given Bolivia׳s low level of GDP per capita and its international insertion based on primary commodity exports, this country is a good candidate for the resource curse. The goal of this paper is to investigate the changes to Bolivia׳s gas policy since 2006 and the evolution of its industry via three aspects: production and inversion, exports, and gas industrialization. In this way we can assess the extent to which policy changes and institutional performance in Bolivia are managing to attenuate some aspects of the resource curse (or not), especially patterns of international insertion. The main conclusion is that the current government has not developed a strategy against the resource curse: instruments to overcome the country׳s productive specialization or primary-export-led international insertion have not been established, and productive linkages have not been encouraged. Instead, the priority of the policy has been to increase State participation in the control (but not the generation) of oil revenues, and significant production changes have not yet been achieved. Ultimately, some aspects of the resource curse have not been attenuated.