IntroductionThe abundance of natural resources in endowed countries was previously considered a positive factor for economic growth. Faced with several economic, political and social issues, natural resources in recent decades have had a considerable effect on the economic literature with regard to economic performance (especially growth), regime type, inequalities, poverty and civil war. Regarding the impact of natural resources on economic development, Andrew Rosser (2006) pointed out that before the late 1980s, common sense regarding the relationship between natural resource abundance and development was that the first was useful to the second. Sandbu (2005) reported that the last decade has seen a resurgence of empirical research on natural resources. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, much academic research challenged this conventional wisdom. Rather than a blessing, this literature emphasizes that natural resource abundance increases the likelihood that countries will experience negative economic, political, and social consequences (Davis et al. 2003, Ross 2001 and 2003, Collier and Goderis, 2007). An influential study by Sachs and Warner (1995) showed that countries' economic growth rates in the 1970s and 1980s were strongly and negatively affected by their dependence on natural resources. According to Pomfret (2006), oil-producing regions do not appear to have experienced sustained employment growth and, furthermore, poverty and inequality remain more severe in oil-producing regions than in non-oil regions. Schubert (2006) pointed out that oil-dependent states have recorded 1.7 percent lower economic growth than non-oil states in recent years. Most oil countries...... middle of paper ...... the curse is an undeniable problem in the majority of countries with point resources, such as oil, and despite enormous evidence in favor of this theory, the problems are It is not linked to the abundance of resources but rather to the dependence on resources which is linked to their institutions, as in the case of Iran. A plausible assertion provided by Thomas Brambor (2008). Contrary to claims in the literature that institutions are the result of resource abundance, we propose to consider the quality of pre-existing institutions as the origin of natural resource dependence. Natural resource abundance only translates into natural resource dependence in the presence of poor institutions. Further research on the structure of political, economic and cultural aspects of institutions is needed to explain how the structure and functioning of institutions in Iran lead to economic dependence on oil..