Cursed Resources? Political Conditions and Oil Market Outcomes / Gilbert E. Metcalf, Catherine Wolfram.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Metcalf, Gilbert E.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Wolfram, Catherine.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w16614.

NBER working paper series no. w16614

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2010.

Summary:

We analyze how a country's political institutions affect oil production within its borders. We find a pronounced negative relationship between political openness and volatility in oil production, with democratic regimes exhibiting less volatility than more autocratic regimes. This relationship holds across a number of robustness checks including using different measures of political conditions, instrumenting for political conditions and using several measures of production volatility. Political openness also affects other oil market outcomes, including total production as a share of reserves. Our findings have implications both for interpreting the role of institutions in explaining differences in macroeconomic development and for understanding world oil markets.

Notes:

Print version record

December 2010.