A Resource Belief-Curse? Oil and Individualism

Rafael Di Tella, Juan Dubra () and Robert MacCulloch

No 14556, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We study the correlation between a belief concerning individualism and a measure of luck in the US during the period 1983-2004. The measure of beliefs is the answer to a question related to whether the poor should be helped by the government or if they should help themselves, while the measure of luck is the share of the oil industry in the state's economy multiplied by the price of oil. The correlation is negative, suggesting that more reliance on luck is correlated with less individualism. We provide three short models that help interpret this correlation. One implication of this finding is that societies that depend heavily on oil, and perhaps natural resources more generally, will experience a heavier demand for government intervention. We argue that if a government cares about the impact of its natural resource policies on the demand of government intervention more generally, it should take this effect into account.

JEL-codes: E62 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-mac
Date: 2008-12
Note: POL
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