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This paper investigates empirically the relationship between natural resource endowment and CO2 emission. We use panel data on 29 countries (OECD and BRICS) over the 1995-2009 period. We first estimate the relationship between national CO2 emissions per GDP and resource abundance, at a macroeconomic level. Our results show that there exists a carbon curse: countries rich in coal, oil and gas emit more CO2 to generate the same amount of economic output as countries where fossil fuels are scarce. We then use these econometric results to assess the consequences of abundance on the sectorial emissions for two groups of countries, depending on their resource endowments. We estimate the relationship between sectorial CO2 emissions per value added, abundance, technology level, environmental policy stringency, corruption, the energy mix, cooling and heating degree days. We fi nd that a country rich in fossil fuels pollutes more in resource-related sectors, but also in all other sectors of the economy, even in the service sectors. We conclude that there is a spreading process of the polluting practices in resource rich countries.
