“The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations,” a book written by UCLA professor of political science Michael Ross and published in 2012, has now been translated into three languages: Russian, Portuguese and Arabic — languages of countries with some of the world’s largest oil reserves. The book, which has gained a new international readership, explores the “curse” of great natural resource wealth on equitable development, arguing that countries with such wealth — especially if they nationalize their resource-extraction companies — are less likely to be democratic, more likely to experience civil war and more apt to develop economies that leave women with fewer rights and opportunities in the job market.
The response to this new development has been enthusiastic, with Ross receiving many emails from readers as well as invitations to speak. Not long ago, he spoke at a conference in Kuwait organized by the Economic Regional Forum, an association of economists from the Middle East region. And online discussions of the book have been lively in both Russian and Arabic.
“It’s very exciting and gratifying,” said Ross. “I tried to write the book to make it explicitly accessible to non-academic audiences so that people from a wide range of backgrounds could ultimately understand it.”
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