Making wealth sharing more efficient in high-rent countries: the citizens’ income

Steffen Hertog

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper argues that hydrocarbon producers with high rents per capita constitute a specific category in the broader universe of rent-dependent countries, facing a specific set of development challenges that are not shared by mid-rent countries. It surveys patterns of rent distribution in high-rent countries (HRCs), focusing on energy subsidies and excessive public employment, and argues that these result in declining energy efficiency and labor productivity as well as exclusion of nationals from the private labor market. It then proposes unconditional cash grants for HRC citizens in combination with subsidy and public employment reform as a mitigation strategy to minimize the HRC-specific distortive effects of rent distribution. It is shown that none of the conventional counterarguments to unconditional cash grants applies in the context of HRCs.

Keywords: energy; subsidies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 14 pages
Date: 2017-12-14
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Energy Transitions, 14, December, 2017. ISSN: 2520-114X

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:101305

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