IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ajagec/v98y2016i1p212-230..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Natural Resource Curse and Fiscal Decentralization

Author

Listed:
  • Fidel Perez-Sebastian
  • Ohad Raveh

Abstract

Natural resource abundance is a blessing for some countries, but a curse for others. We show that differences across countries in the degree of fiscal decentralization can contribute to this divergent outcome. Using a large panel of countries covering several decades and various fiscal decentralization and natural resource measures, we provide empirical support for the novel hypothesis. We also study a model that combines political and market mechanisms under a unified framework to illustrate how natural resource booms may create negative effects in fiscally decentralized nations.

Suggested Citation

  • Fidel Perez-Sebastian & Ohad Raveh, 2016. "The Natural Resource Curse and Fiscal Decentralization," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 98(1), pages 212-230.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:ajagec:v:98:y:2016:i:1:p:212-230.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ajae/aav051
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brunnschweiler, Christa N. & Bulte, Erwin H., 2008. "The resource curse revisited and revised: A tale of paradoxes and red herrings," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 55(3), pages 248-264, May.
    2. Halvor Mehlum & Karl Moene & Ragnar Torvik, 2006. "Institutions and the Resource Curse," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 116(508), pages 1-20, January.
    3. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Roberto Ezcurra, 2011. "Is fiscal decentralization harmful for economic growth? Evidence from the OECD countries," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 11(4), pages 619-643, July.
    4. Puga, Diego, 1999. "The rise and fall of regional inequalities," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 303-334, February.
    5. Borck, Rainald & Pfluger, Michael, 2006. "Agglomeration and tax competition," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 647-668, April.
    6. Hodler, Roland, 2006. "The curse of natural resources in fractionalized countries," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(6), pages 1367-1386, August.
    7. Fernanda Brollo & Tommaso Nannicini & Roberto Perotti & Guido Tabellini, 2013. "The Political Resource Curse," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(5), pages 1759-1796, August.
    8. Sachs, Jeffrey D. & Warner, Andrew M., 1999. "The big push, natural resource booms and growth," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 43-76, June.
    9. Fisman, Raymond & Gatti, Roberta, 2002. "Decentralization and corruption: evidence across countries," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(3), pages 325-345, March.
    10. Gylfason, Thorvaldur, 2001. "Natural resources, education, and economic development," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(4-6), pages 847-859, May.
    11. Davoodi, Hamid & Zou, Heng-fu, 1998. "Fiscal Decentralization and Economic Growth: A Cross-Country Study," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 244-257, March.
    12. Keen, Michael & Marchand, Maurice, 1997. "Fiscal competition and the pattern of public spending," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 33-53, October.
    13. Andersen, Jørgen Juel & Aslaksen, Silje, 2008. "Constitutions and the resource curse," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 227-246, October.
    14. Barro, Robert J. & Lee, Jong Wha, 2013. "A new data set of educational attainment in the world, 1950–2010," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 184-198.
    15. Charles M. Tiebout, 1956. "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64(5), pages 416-416.
    16. Ciccone, Antonio & Hall, Robert E, 1996. "Productivity and the Density of Economic Activity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(1), pages 54-70, March.
    17. Hongbin Cai & Daniel Treisman, 2005. "Does Competition for Capital Discipline Governments? Decentralization, Globalization, and Public Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 817-830, June.
    18. Francesco Caselli & Guy Michaels, 2013. "Do Oil Windfalls Improve Living Standards? Evidence from Brazil," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 208-238, January.
    19. Frederick van der Ploeg, 2011. "Natural Resources: Curse or Blessing?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(2), pages 366-420, June.
    20. Decressin, Jorg & Fatas, Antonio, 1995. "Regional labor market dynamics in Europe," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(9), pages 1627-1655, December.
    21. Sachs, Jeffrey D & Warner, Andrew M, 1997. "Fundamental Sources of Long-Run Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(2), pages 184-188, May.
    22. Caselli, Francesco & Esquivel, Gerardo & Lefort, Fernando, 1996. "Reopening the Convergence Debate: A New Look at Cross-Country Growth Empirics," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 1(3), pages 363-389, September.
    23. Panizza, Ugo, 1999. "On the determinants of fiscal centralization: Theory and evidence," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 97-139, October.
    24. Wilson, John Douglas & Wildasin, David E., 2004. "Capital tax competition: bane or boon," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(6), pages 1065-1091, June.
    25. Michael Storper, 2005. "Society, Community and Economic Development," Post-Print hal-03416658, HAL.
    26. Wallace E. Oates & Wallace E. Oates, 2004. "Fiscal Decentralization and Economic Development," Chapters, in: Environmental Policy and Fiscal Federalism, chapter 21, pages 377-383, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    27. Kotera, Go & Okada, Keisuke & Samreth, Sovannroeun, 2012. "Government size, democracy, and corruption: An empirical investigation," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 2340-2348.
    28. Qian, Yingyi & Roland, Gerard, 1998. "Federalism and the Soft Budget Constraint," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(5), pages 1143-1162, December.
    29. Ohad Raveh, 2013. "Dutch Disease, factor mobility, and the Alberta Effect: the case of federations," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 46(4), pages 1317-1350, November.
    30. Bucovetsky, S., 1991. "Asymmetric tax competition," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 167-181, September.
    31. Arzaghi, Mohammad & Henderson, J. Vernon, 2005. "Why countries are fiscally decentralizing," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(7), pages 1157-1189, July.
    32. Andres Rodriguez-Pose & Nicholas Gill, 2005. "On the 'economic dividend' of devolution," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(4), pages 405-420.
    33. Rabah Arezki & Frederick van der Ploeg, 2011. "Do Natural Resources Depress Income Per Capita?," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(3), pages 504-521, August.
    34. Gylfason, Thorvaldur & Herbertsson, Tryggvi Thor & Zoega, Gylfi, 1997. "A Mixed Blessing: Natural Resources and Economic Growth," CEPR Discussion Papers 1668, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    35. Gylfason, Thorvaldur & Herbertsson, Tryggvi Thor & Zoega, Gylfi, 1999. "A Mixed Blessing," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 3(2), pages 204-225, June.
    36. Zhang, Tao & Zou, Heng-fu, 1998. "Fiscal decentralization, public spending, and economic growth in China," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 221-240, February.
    37. Corden, W Max & Neary, J Peter, 1982. "Booming Sector and De-Industrialisation in a Small Open Economy," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 92(368), pages 825-848, December.
    38. Alesina, Alberto & Spolaore, Enrico & Wacziarg, Romain, 2005. "Trade, Growth and the Size of Countries," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 23, pages 1499-1542, Elsevier.
    39. Oates, Wallace E., 1993. "Fiscal Decentralization and Economic Development," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 46(2), pages 237-43, June.
    40. Rodriguez, Francisco & Sachs, Jeffrey D, 1999. "Why Do Resource-Abundant Economies Grow More Slowly?," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 4(3), pages 277-303, September.
    41. Newman, Robert J. & Sullivan, Dennis H., 1988. "Econometric analysis of business tax impacts on industrial location: What do we know, and how do we know it?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 215-234, March.
    42. Francesco Caselli & Tom Cunningham, 2009. "Leader behaviour and the natural resource curse," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 61(4), pages 628-650, October.
    43. Caselli, Francesco & Cunningham, Tom, 2009. "Leader behavior and the natural resource curse," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 25430, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    44. Papyrakis, Elissaios & Gerlagh, Reyer, 2007. "Resource abundance and economic growth in the United States," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(4), pages 1011-1039, May.
    45. Li, Shaomin & Li, Shuhe & Zhang, Weiying, 2000. "The Road to Capitalism: Competition and Institutional Change in China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 269-292, June.
    46. Sachs, Jeffrey D. & Warner, Andrew M., 2001. "The curse of natural resources," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(4-6), pages 827-838, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ohad Raveh, 2013. "Dutch Disease, factor mobility, and the Alberta Effect: the case of federations," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 46(4), pages 1317-1350, November.
    2. Guilló, Maria Dolores & Perez-Sebastian, Fidel, 2015. "Neoclassical growth and the natural resource curse puzzle," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 423-435.
    3. Reingewertz, Yaniv, 2014. "Fiscal Decentralization - a Survey of the Empirical Literature," MPRA Paper 59889, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Frederick van der Ploeg, 2011. "Natural Resources: Curse or Blessing?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(2), pages 366-420, June.
    5. Raveh, Ohad, 2010. "Dutch Disease, Factor Mobility Costs, and the ‘Alberta Effect’ – The Case of Federations," MPRA Paper 29662, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Badeeb, Ramez Abubakr & Lean, Hooi Hooi & Clark, Jeremy, 2017. "The evolution of the natural resource curse thesis: A critical literature survey," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 123-134.
    7. Ruba A. Aljarallah & Andrew Angus, 2020. "Dilemma of Natural Resource Abundance: A Case Study of Kuwait," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(1), pages 21582440198, January.
    8. Dauvin, Magali & Guerreiro, David, 2017. "The Paradox of Plenty: A Meta-Analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 212-231.
    9. Pérez, Claudia & Claveria, Oscar, 2020. "Natural resources and human development: Evidence from mineral-dependent African countries using exploratory graphical analysis," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    10. Apergis, Nicholas & Payne, James E., 2014. "The oil curse, institutional quality, and growth in MENA countries: Evidence from time-varying cointegration," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 1-9.
    11. Hilmawan, Rian & Clark, Jeremy, 2021. "Resource dependence and the causes of local economic growth: An empirical investigation," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 65(03), January.
    12. Tania Masi & Antonio Savoia & Kunal Sen, 2018. "Is there a fiscal resource curse? Resource rents, fiscal capacity and political institutions," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series esid-096-18, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    13. Cockx, Lara & Francken, Nathalie, 2016. "Natural resources: A curse on education spending?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 394-408.
    14. Hilmawan, Rian & Clark, Jeremy, 2019. "An investigation of the resource curse in Indonesia," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    15. Carmignani, Fabrizio, 2013. "Development outcomes, resource abundance, and the transmission through inequality," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 412-428.
    16. Osiris Jorge Parcero & Elissaios Papyrakis, 2024. "Income inequality and the oil resource curse," Papers 2401.04046, arXiv.org.
    17. Collier, Paul & Goderis, Benedikt, 2012. "Commodity prices and growth: An empirical investigation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(6), pages 1241-1260.
    18. Jorge Martinez-Vazquez & Santiago Lago-Peñas & Agnese Sacchi, 2017. "The Impact Of Fiscal Decentralization: A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(4), pages 1095-1129, September.
    19. Shahbaz, Muhammad & Naeem, Muhammad & Ahad, Muhammad & Tahir, Iqbal, 2018. "Is natural resource abundance a stimulus for financial development in the USA?," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 223-232.
    20. Parcero, Osiris J. & Papyrakis, Elissaios, 2016. "Income inequality and the oil resource curse," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 159-177.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • Q32 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation - - - Exhaustible Resources and Economic Development
    • Q33 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation - - - Resource Booms (Dutch Disease)
    • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products
    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
    • H77 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:ajagec:v:98:y:2016:i:1:p:212-230.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaeaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.