Recently, work on the natural resource curse thesis has extended to testing the effects of natural resources on public health. Focusing on the case of malaria, this paper examines the effects of the interaction between resource dependence and political institutions on malaria management. To be more specific, this work argues that in a resource-abundant state, democracy plays an active role in providing health goods to the general public and allocating government funds to public health. Democracies also combat corruption behaviors and diversify economies in a more effective way than their autocratic counterparts. By testing a series of interaction effects between natural resources and democracy, this paper finds a positive and robust effect of democracy on the reduction of malaria death rates in resource-rich states, based on data on malaria deaths during the period of 1990–2016. Resource-rich dictatorships demonstrated the worst performance in malaria control compared with resource-rich democracies and resource-poor democracies and dictatorships. This empirical evidence has policy implications for resource management, public health, and infectious disease control and prevention.

中文翻译：

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民主、自然资源和传染病：疟疾案例，1990-2016

最近，关于自然资源诅咒论文的工作已扩展到测试自然资源对公共健康的影响。本文以疟疾为例，考察了资源依赖与政治制度之间的相互作用对疟疾管理的影响。更具体地说，这项工作认为，在一个资源丰富的国家，民主在向公众提供健康产品和将政府资金分配给公共卫生方面发挥着积极作用。民主国家还以比专制国家更有效的方式打击腐败行为并使经济多样化。通过测试自然资源与民主之间的一系列交互效应，本文发现民主对资源丰富国家降低疟疾死亡率具有积极而稳健的影响，基于 1990-2016 年期间疟疾死亡的数据。与资源丰富的民主国家和资源匮乏的民主国家和独裁政权相比，资源丰富的独裁政权在疟疾控制方面的表现最差。这一经验证据对资源管理、公共卫生以及传染病控制和预防具有政策意义。