Although there seems to be a consensus that a resource curse often exists (with the notable exceptions of Brunnschweiler and Bulte (2008) and van der Ploeg and Poelhekke (2010)), the empirical literature faces greater challenges in establishing why natural resource wealth is often associated with undesirable outcomes, because cross-country comparisons are plagued with endogeneity issues (Cust and Poelhekke, 2015).
In the present paper, we provide evidence on whether salience of future gas revenues affects people’s expectations about the prevalence of future corruption and whether this, in turn, shapes people’s views on corruption and willingness to engage in dishonest behavior.