Sharing oil rents and political violence

Tito Cordella and Harun Onder

European Journal of Political Economy, 2020, vol. 63, issue C

Abstract: This paper investigates how the devolution of oil windfalls affects the likelihood of political violence. It shows that transferring large shares of oil wealth can prevent conflict, while transferring small shares can trigger it. Among the different transfer schemes, fiscal transfers (to subnational governments) yield the highest levels of consumption, but direct transfers (to people) are the most effective in preventing conflict. By averting conflict, transfers can improve ex ante welfare; however, only a subset of the ex ante welfare optimal transfers is optimal ex post and thus self-enforcing. Among them, those that avert conflict by reinforcing repressive regimes are of particular policy interest.

Keywords: Natural resources; Conflict; Redistribution; Aggregative games (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D74 H41 H56 H71 O13 Q34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Working Paper: Sharing oil rents and political violence (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:poleco:v:63:y:2020:i:c:s0176268020300306

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2020.101882

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