Oil-to-Cash: Fighting the Resource Curse through Cash Transfers

Todd Moss, senior fellow and vice president for programs at the Center for Global Development, demonstrates how leaders of poor countries can beat the resource curse -- the paradox that countries that strike it rich often suffer from high poverty, dismal governance, and terrible corruption. His policy option, called Oil-to-Cash, helps foster a social contract in resource-rich countries by directly distributing natural resource revenues. Under this proposal, a government would transfer some or all of the revenue from natural resource extraction to citizens in a universal, transparent, and regular payment--and, importantly, then tax part of it back.