Mozambique what (else) could go wrong?

Abstract

As often as not, sudden spurts of economic growth in developing countries prove to be unsustainable. The culprit may be one of the usual suspects — adverse external shocks like hurricanes, imprudent fiscal policy that triggers inflation and capital flight, political unrest, or the economist’s favorite: “the resource curse” associated with the windfall profits of natural wealth. Rarely, however, has the mere expectation of future wealth short-circuited balanced growth, as has happened following the discovery of natural gas off the coast of Mozambique.