This paper examines the impact of the oil price boom in the 1970s and the subsequent bust on non-oil economic activity in oil-dependent countries. During the boom, manufacturing exports and value added increased significantly relative to non-oil dependent countries,along with wages, employment,...

GDP growth in the GCC has been considerably higher than in advanced economies or other oil exporters since 1986. The paper shows that the GCC countries have swiftly accumulated large stocks of physical capital but the population increase and the shift away from oil meant that capital intensity...

Public investment and subsidies are typically inefficient but in the GCC these are crucial engines of growth. Subsidies are also used to redistribute oil windfalls in the region, and the problem of a government that wants to 'distribute' oil money is a problem fully symmetric to the one analyzed...

We use new data to examine the effects of giant oilfield discoveries around the world since 1946. On average, these discoveries increase per capita oil production and oil exports by up to 50 percent. But these giant oilfield discoveries also have a dark side: they increase the incidence of...

We criticize existing empirical results on the detrimental effects of natural resource dependence on the rate of economic growth after controlling for institutional quality, openness, and initial income. These results do not survive once we use instrumental variables techniques to correct for...

Do reduced costs of factor mobility mitigate Dutch Disease effects, to the extent that they are reversed? The case of federations provides an indication they do. We observe Resource Blessing effects at the federal-state level (within federations) yet rather Resource Curse ones at the federal...