Abstract
Having natural resources is expected to increase the level of economic growth and financial development. This expectation does not seem to be the case, however, for some resource-rich countries. In this context, the aim of the study is to determine whether the "Financial Resource Curse" hypothesis is valid in the BRICS countries which are rich in natural resources for the 1992-2018 period. In the study, second generation test techniques that allow for cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity were used for empirical analysis. According to the empirical findings, the effect of natural resource income on the level of financial development is positive in Brazil and Russia, and negative in South Africa. In China and India, however, no statistically significant relationship could be found between natural resource income and financial development. As a result, it has been determined that the “Financial Resource Curse” hypothesis is valid only for South Africa among the BRICS countries. In order to reduce the negative effects of South Africa's abundance of natural resources and to overcome this disadvantage, it is important to use natural resource revenues efficiently and transfer them to other sectors of the economy, to focus on technological innovations and human capital development.