Breaking the Resource Trap: Institutions, Human Capital, Financial Technology, and Digital Innovation in <scp>BRICS</scp> +

ABSTRACT The reliance on natural resource rents is increasingly a factor that decisively influences the economic stability and sustainability of states, especially in the context of the expanded BRICS economies. The study investigates the drivers of resource dependence in these countries, focusing on FinTech, institutional quality, digitalization, and human capital. The current work analysis utilizes a balanced panel dataset from 1996 to 2023 and leverages the Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR) to identify heterogeneous effects at different levels of natural resource dependence. Common Correlated Effects Mean Group (CCEMG) estimators and Augmented Mean Group (AMG) are used to test robustness, which shows that the results are consistent and in the right direction. The findings of the present study show that financial technology greatly alleviates resource dependence, particularly in countries with high natural resource intensity. Institutional quality also helps in decreasing dependence, though to a lesser extent, especially in non–resource‐dependent settings, whereas human capital exerts a negative but less robust impact. By contrast, digitalization is found to be positively related to resource rents, indicating that without green policy harmonization, in the short run at least, the expansion of digital technologies could prove to be more intense in terms of resource utilization. The paper's originality also consists in the interaction of distribution‐sensitive quantile regressions with second‐generation estimators under resource dependence conditions, providing new evidence on how structural technology components interact asymmetrically among BRICS+ economies.