Timor Leste - Sustainable Development or Resource Cursed?: An Exploration of Timor-Leste's Institutional Choices

This book explores the institutional choices available to Timor-Leste to manage their natural resource wealth wisely and avoid the resource curse. Timor-Leste is a poor country and its challenge is to use its large per capita resource wealth to alleviate poverty and enable sustainable development. Timor-Leste's Petroleum Fund Law and other mechanisms to manage petroleum revenue are examined. These mechanisms appear to be resilient, but remain untested. Based on field interviews in Timor-Leste, the study offers insights into the opinions of East Timorese and foreign advisers about how Timor-Leste's petroleum revenue should be managed, and how a poor country can raise the living standards of its people.