Abstract
It has been argued that issues of corruption may be particularly relevant in the context of natural resources, as natural resource exploration is an extremely high rent activity likely to foster rentseeking behavior. The existing literature on natural resources and corruption suffers from omitted variable bias. This paper re-examines the effect of natural resource abundance on corruption using panel data estimation as well as new measures of resource endowments. I find evidence indicating that both oil extraction and mineral income is associated with more corruption. The adverse impact of oil on corruption is present both in democratic and nondemocratic countries.