This article examines the common and major solutions that have been implemented in recent decades by countries rich in natural resources to face the destructive effects of these resources and strengthen their positive effects. For this purpose, six main solutions including macroeconomic policies to deal with the cyclicality of financial policies, decentralization, privatization, diversification, direct distribution and institutional reforms have been examined along with their related sub-solutions. Then, relying on various researches that have been done in the field of the consequences and efficiency of each of the solutions, we have criticized them. These criticisms are often divided into two categories, inside and outside the discourse, and the focus of outside-the-discourse criticisms is focused on the inappropriateness of the conditions and the lack of preparation of platforms for the implementation of many of these strategies in different regions of the world. In the end, while emphasizing the lack of a single solution, and at the same time, the possibility of efficiency of each of the solutions in special conditions, and taking into account the historical coordinates of their implementation, we have presented new perspectives to understand these coordinates.

Introduction: Iran has got the third largest oil reserves in the world and despite this natural wealth, it's economic conditions in comparison to many poor countries, is undesirable and it seems in the case of resource curse is true. It is believed that resource abundance affect the poor by instability in the export price of primary resources, increase in inequality, decrease in growth rate, governance and political structure, Dutch Disease and internal war.Method: ARDL approach is used to examine the relationship between abundance of natural resources and poverty over period (1981-2007).Findings: According to our findings, we cannot impute poverty to resources abundance.Conclusion: Studies that have used abundance measure (per capita natural resource) in spite of presence of poverty and inequality in natural resources- rich countries cannot confirm the relationship between poverty and inequality, and natural resources abundance. These researches point out institutions convert wealth to curse instead of blessed.

Investigating the relationship between oil revenues and financialization in countries with abundant natural resources is particularly important. Considering the dependence of Iran's economy on oil rent, this paper examines the effect of oil revenues on financialization. The simultaneous equations system approach and time series data for 1979 through 2018 were used to analyze the relationship between variables. The research findings show that oil revenues positively and significantly affect financialization. Also, economic growth, human capital, and institutional quality have a negative and significant impact on financialization. But, physical capital and inflation impress positive and significant effects on financialization. Therefore, oil revenues along with the low quality of institutions, extensive sanctions, and oil price fluctuations conduct in an increase in rents and corruption, weakening of property rights, distrust of government policies, and an increase in speculative incentives. A rise in speculative incentives leads to the deviation of capital from the real to the financial sector; finally, the capital transfer to the financial sector also directs to an increase in financialization.

In recent decades, the effect of the sources of state-nation’s income on society has attracted more attention. Theories such as the renter state, natural resource curse, and the Dutch disease in different fields of social science support this argument.There are two paradoxical views on the consequences of state different revenue resource abundance. Some scholars point out to the negative consequences of resource abundance on socio-political structure of country. In contrast, the opponents emphasize on positive consequences of resource abundance on the growth of democratic institutions, rule of law, effective governance, political stability, and so on.The authors have provided a summary of different views and then, examined the effects of primary commodity exports and foreign aid by using a large Number of cases.Data were gathered from international sources for all countries with reliable data, and its average from 1996 to 2009 was analyzed.The research findings confirmed negative effects of resource abundance. The negative impact on political stability and democracy is more outstanding than others while the negative impact of foreign aid on corruption control and the rule of law are higher, and foreign aid has no significant effect on democracy.

In the 20 th century, market failure in the optimal allocation of resources and the rising poverty in the competitive market resulted in the formation of the welfare state idea with socialist tendencies in the fight against poverty, especially absolute poverty by the governments. The 2015 Economics Nobel Prize to Dayton Angus indicates this government’ s change in allocation instrument of the market in the fight against poverty. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the educational and sanitarian government expenditures and resource curse effects on absolute poverty in Iran. Using a Markov switching method, the factors affecting poverty have been modelled and the hypothesis was tested during the period 1985-2014. The results showed that an increase in educational government expenditures had a significant and negative effect on absolute poverty but higher sanitarian government expenditures did not have a decreasing impact on poverty. Also, the evaluation of resource curse hypothesis showed that oil revenue had a threshold and nonlinear effect on absolute poverty. In other words, as long as oil revenue share is less than 13%, the increase in oil revenue portion leads to decrease in absolute poverty but passing more than 13% threshold in oil revenue portion increases absolute poverty.

Human capital is one of the most important inputs in production function that this factor has a crucial role in economic development process. Human capital in oil-dependent countries such as Iran could be affected by oil revenues as well as the form of distribution of oil rent. These evidences accompanied with contradictory and ambiguous impacts. The aim of this paper is to investigate the nonlinear impact of oil revenue on human capital in Iran during the period of 1975-2014. For this purpose, by using a threshold regression model, human capital has been modeled. The empirical results indicate that when the share of oil revenues in GDP is less than about 0.09, increasing share of oil revenues in GDP has a positive significant impact on human capital that the estimated coefficient is 20.21. But after the threshold level, increasing the share of oil revenue in GDP has a significant positive impact on human capital that the estimated coefficient is 5.37. Therefore, the intensity of oil revenue effect on human capital has been dramatically decreased in high oil revenue regime rather than the low oil revenue regime. Therefore, decreasing dependency to oil revenues increases human capital.

Achieving happiness has been always one of the goals pursued by human societies that has attracted the attention of many policy makers, thinkers and researchers. Meanwhile, the relationship between the oil revenues and happiness in the oil-exporting countries is an important subject that has rarely been noted. Therefore, the purpose of the present paper is to test the Easterlin paradox using resource curse hypothesis and to investigate the threshold effect of oil rent on happiness in OPEC countries in the period 2005-2016. For this purpose, the factors affecting happiness were modeled using dynamic threshold panel model. The estimation results have shown that the Easterlin paradox exists in OPEC countries. In other words, first, the increase in the ratio of oil revenues to GDP has improved happiness in oil-producing countries, and after exceeding the 43% threshold, increasing the ratio of oil revenues to GDP has reduced happiness in these countries.

This article is a critical review on the topic of resource curse paradigm, which is the idea that the abundance of minerals and fuels can have negative effects on the development of less developed countries. In particular, resource cursing theory suggests that the abundance of minerals and fuels leads to the formation of government intervention that hinder growth, deepen rent-seeking, and spread corruption, all of which in terms of development policy can cause negative and consequential effects on the development and growth of a country. However according to historical evidences, recent researches, and related studies, there are other factors involved throughout the underdevelopment of countries which possess natural resources that can cause more lasting effects on the development of countries at the decision-making and policy-making levels. Certain factors such as government focus, pervasive systemic corruption, government policy-making capacity, and overall threshold effects (government financial capacity, ownership structure, and government capability in developing dual growth strategies) have the potential to negatively influence a country's development process and have it deviatedto wards its abyss and eventually prevent it from growing. Next to dealing with the Dutch disease, rentseeking state, and rent-seeking version of the curse of resources, the present article concludes that these concepts are in short supply in terms of theory and evidence. This work also identifies the factors that can influence the determination of welfare threshold in developing countries, which suggests that as the threshold is lowered, the risk of cursing resources becomes higher.