The paper uses a set of international data to analyze the impact of countries’ resource abundance on their long-term economic growth. In particular, the author focuses on explaining the essence of what is known as the "resource curse". He uses two groups of determinants, geographical and institutional. The paper begins with a look at the gist of the problem, with the author discussing the rationale behind the research. This is followed by a discussion of other research reports on the subject and a short description of other authors’ findings. In the next part of the paper, Kożuchowski describes his own research method and the set of variables that he uses for his OLS-regression model. The parameters are estimated with the use of geographical and institutional variables, separately for each group, and the final versions of the models are selected on the basis of a set of reliable statistical tests, Kożuchowski says. The author makes several assumptions about "the resource curse". His research shows that key factors of growth include economic openness and political stability, while most geographical factors are not statistically or intuitively significant, Kożuchowski says. The author emphasizes the role of soft data for that kind of research. The results show that such variables adequately reflect the institutional position of countries, Kożuchowski concludes.