Evidence for a Presource Curse? : Oil Discoveries, Elevated Expectations, and Growth Disappointments

Cust, James ; Mihalyi, David

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: OIL REVENUE;    RESOURCE CURSE;    ECONOMIC GROWTH;    FORECASTING;    INSTITUTIONS;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-8140
RP-ID  :  WPS8140

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Oil discoveries can constitute a majorpositive and exogenous shock to economic activity, but theresource curse hypothesis would suggest they might also bedetrimental to growth over the long run. This paper utilizesa new methodology for estimating growth underperformance toexamine the extent to which discoveries depress the growthpath of a country following a discovery and prior toproduction starting. The study finds causal evidence of asignificant negative effect on short-run growth and growthrelative to counterfactual forecast growth in countries withweak institutions, creating growth disappointments prior toprivate and public resource windfalls. This effect is termedthe presource curse. For a giant oil or gas discovery in1988-2010, the study estimates an average growthdisappointment effect of 0.83 percentage points, measured asthe average annual gap between forecast and actual growthover the five years following a discovery. Further, theestimated effect varies by the size of the discovery,increasing to a 1.77 percentage points gap in the case ofsuper giant discoveries. The estimated effect is inverselyrelated to the quality of political institutions, and drivenby countries with lower institutional quality at the time ofthe discovery, consistent with the similar long-run resultsdocumented in the resource curse literature. For countrieswith below-threshold institutional quality, the growthdisappointment effect is larger, measured as 1.35 percentagepoints in annual terms. There is no measured growthdisappointment effect for countries with stronginstitutions. Using the synthetic control method, we confirmour findings for a selection of countries above and belowthe institutional quality threshold. The findings suggestthat studies of the resource curse that focus only on theeffects of resource exploitation or examine only long-rungrowth effects may overlook important short-run growthdisappointments following discoveries, and the way countriesrespond to news shocks.