Thesis: The thesis includes three essays in the content of the natural resource curse. The first essay revisits the Dutch disease hypothesis in terms of theory and empirical analysis. This shows that a resource boom appreciates the real exchange rate. That, in turn, decelerates the rate of growth in both sectors such that the shrinkage is larger in the traded than non-traded sector and so economic growth becomes slower. These effects are stronger in resource-rich than resource-poor countries. The second essay clarifies how income inequality-growth nexus modifies the Dutch disease hypothesis. A two-sector growth model including two groups of workers with different consumption baskets demonstrates that a natural resource boom conditionally reduces income inequality which, in turn, exacerbates the intensity of the Dutch disease. The theory’s predictions are supported empirically using a panel data approach. The third essay investigates the impact of the absorption capacity on the intensity of the natural resource curse. Using two constructed indexes to proxy the absorption capacity, the empirical findings show that the natural resource curse is more intensive in countries with more absorption capacity constraints. The empirical finding is also analyzed through a simple two-sector framework.