IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nst/samfok/15613.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Property Rights, Oil and Income Levels: Over a Century of Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Christa N. Brunnschweiler

    (Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology)

  • Simone Valente

    (Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology)

Abstract

We investigate the e¤ects of di¤erent regimes of control rights over oil exploitation on ag- gregate domestic income. We construct a new panel dataset on petroleum ownership struc- tures for up to 68 countries between 1867-2008, distinguishing among regimes of Domestic Control, Foreign Control, and international Partnerships. Results show that Partnerships tend to generate higher domestic income than Foreign and Domestic Control. This result is robust to controlling for political regimes (i.e. democracy, anocracy, autocracy), time e¤ects, and other factors. Existing theories of incomplete contracts capture several aspects, but not the general mechanism underlying the relationships between aggregate domestic income and control regimes in primary sectors.

Suggested Citation

  • Christa N. Brunnschweiler & Simone Valente, 2013. "Property Rights, Oil and Income Levels: Over a Century of Evidence," Working Paper Series 15613, Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
    • Handle: RePEc:nst:samfok:15613
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.svt.ntnu.no/iso/WP/2013/18_christa_AS.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    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. Sergei Guriev & Anton Kolotilin & Konstantin Sonin, 2011. "Determinants of Nationalization in the Oil Sector: A Theory and Evidence from Panel Data," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 27(2), pages 301-323.
    3. Hart, Oliver & Moore, John, 1990. "Property Rights and the Nature of the Firm," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1119-1158, December.
    4. Halvor Mehlum & Karl Moene & Ragnar Torvik, 2006. "Institutions and the Resource Curse," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 116(508), pages 1-20, January.
    5. Jonathan Levin & Steven Tadelis, 2005. "Profit Sharing and the Role of Professional Partnerships," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(1), pages 131-171.
    6. Jonathan Thomas & Tim Worrall, 1994. "Foreign Direct Investment and the Risk of Expropriation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 61(1), pages 81-108.
    7. Maija Halonen, 2002. "Reputation And The Allocation Of Ownership," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(481), pages 539-558, July.
    8. Besley, Timothy & Ghatak, Maitreesh, 2010. "Property Rights and Economic Development," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Dani Rodrik & Mark Rosenzweig (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 4525-4595, Elsevier.
    9. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson & Pierre Yared, 2008. "Income and Democracy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 808-842, June.
    10. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1986. "The Costs and Benefits of Ownership: A Theory of Vertical and Lateral Integration," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 691-719, August.
    11. Heski Bar-Isaac, 2007. "Something to prove: reputation in teams," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 38(2), pages 495-511, June.
    12. Robert T. Deacon & Henning Bohn, 2000. "Ownership Risk, Investment, and the Use of Natural Resources," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(3), pages 526-549, June.
    13. John C. Driscoll & Aart C. Kraay, 1998. "Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimation With Spatially Dependent Panel Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(4), pages 549-560, November.
    14. Timothy Besley & Maitreesh Ghatak, 2001. "Government Versus Private Ownership of Public Goods," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(4), pages 1343-1372.
    15. Päivi Lujala & Jan Ketil Rod & Nadja Thieme, 2007. "Fighting over Oil: Introducing a New Dataset," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 24(3), pages 239-256, July.
    16. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson, 2005. "Unbundling Institutions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(5), pages 949-995, October.
    17. Pol Antràs, 2014. "Grossman–Hart (1986) Goes Global: Incomplete Contracts, Property Rights, and the International Organization of Production," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 30(suppl_1), pages 118-175.
    18. Andrew Mold & Sebastian Paulo & Annalisa Prizon, 2009. "Taking Stock of the Credit Crunch: Implications for Development Finance and Global Governance," OECD Development Centre Working Papers 277, OECD Publishing.
    19. Megginson, William Leon, 2005. "The Financial Economics of Privatization," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195150629.
    20. Raghuram G. Rajan & Luigi Zingales, 1998. "Power in a Theory of the Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(2), pages 387-432.
    21. 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.
    22. Daniel Hoechle, 2007. "Robust standard errors for panel regressions with cross-sectional dependence," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 7(3), pages 281-312, September.
    23. Sergei Guriev & Konstantin Sonin & Anton Kolotilin, 2007. "Determinants of Expropriation in the Oil Sector: A Theory and Evidence from Panel Data," Working Papers w0115, Center for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR).
    24. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2008. "Joint ownership and the hold-up problem under asymmetric information," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 99(3), pages 577-580, June.
    25. Chiu, Y Stephen, 1998. "Noncooperative Bargaining, Hostages, and Optimal Asset Ownership," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(4), pages 882-901, September.
    26. Wolf, Christian, 2009. "Does ownership matter? The performance and efficiency of State Oil vs. Private Oil (1987-2006)," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(7), pages 2642-2652, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kirill Borissov & Mikhail Pakhnin, 2018. "Economic growth and property rights on natural resources," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 65(2), pages 423-482, March.
    2. Kirill Borissov & Mikhail Pakhnin, 2018. "Economic growth and property rights on natural resources," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 65(2), pages 423-482, March.
    3. Tim Wegenast, 2016. "Oil, Natural Gas, and Intrastate Conflict: Does Ownership Matter?," International Interactions, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(1), pages 31-55, January.
    4. Iacono, Roberto, 2016. "No blessing, no curse? On the benefits of being a resource-rich southern region of Italy," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 346-359.
    5. Brunnschweiler, Christa N. & Poelhekke, Steven, 2021. "Pushing one’s luck: Petroleum ownership and discoveries," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    6. Khanna, Arpita Asha, 2017. "Revisiting the Oil Curse: Does Ownership Matter?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 214-229.
    7. Mohammad Kemal, 2016. "Ownership Rights versus Access Rights Allocation to Critical Resources: An Empirical Study of the Economic Impact of Changes in Oil Governance," Working Papers 2016-02, Colorado School of Mines, Division of Economics and Business.

    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. Christa N. Brunnschweiler & Simone Valente, 2011. "International Partnerships, Foreign Control and Income Levels: Theory and Evidence," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 11/154, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    2. Valeria Gattai & Piergiovanna Natale, 2014. "Joint Ventures and the Property Rights Theory of the Firm: a Review of the Literature," Working Papers 287, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics, revised Dec 2014.
    3. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2015. "Government versus private ownership of public goods: The role of bargaining frictions," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 23-31.
    4. Rainer, Helmut, 2007. "Should we write prenuptial contracts?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 337-363, February.
    5. Valeria Gattai & Piergiovanna Natale, 2017. "A New Cinderella Story: Joint Ventures And The Property Rights Theory Of The Firm," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1), pages 281-302, February.
    6. Rainer, Helmut, 2007. "Should we write prenuptial contracts?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 337-363, February.
    7. Boschini, Anne & Pettersson, Jan & Roine, Jesper, 2013. "The Resource Curse and its Potential Reversal," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 19-41.
    8. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2013. "Bargaining position, bargaining power, and the property rights approach," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 119(1), pages 28-31.
    9. Kvaløy, Ola, 2008. "Do norms matter for firm boundaries?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 969-975, June.
    10. Christian A. Ruzzier, 2009. "Asset Specificity and Vertical Integration: Williamson’s Hypothesis Reconsidered," Harvard Business School Working Papers 09-119, Harvard Business School.
    11. Francesconi, Marco & Muthoo, Abhinay, 2006. "Control Rights in Public-Private Partnerships," IZA Discussion Papers 2143, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Ouoba, Youmanli, 2016. "Natural resources: Funds and economic performance of resource-rich countries," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 108-116.
    13. Besley, Timothy & Ghatak, Maitreesh, 2010. "Property Rights and Economic Development," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Dani Rodrik & Mark Rosenzweig (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 4525-4595, Elsevier.
    14. Müller, Daniel & Schmitz, Patrick W., 2016. "Transaction costs and the property rights approach to the theory of the firm," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 92-107.
    15. Halonen-Akatwijuka, Maija, 2012. "Nature of human capital, technology and ownership of public goods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(11), pages 939-945.
    16. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2013. "Investments in physical capital, relationship-specificity, and the property rights approach," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 119(3), pages 336-339.
    17. Schmitz, Patrick W, 2001. "The Hold-up Problem and Incomplete Contracts: A Survey of Recent Topics in Contract Theory," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(1), pages 1-17, January.
    18. Kvaløy, Ola & Olsen, Trond E., 2008. "Relative performance evaluation, agent hold-up and firm organization," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 229-241, June.
    19. Tobias Regner & Maija Halonen-Akatwijuka, 2004. "Digital Technology And The Allocation Of Ownership In The Music Industry," Royal Economic Society Annual Conference 2004 54, Royal Economic Society.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
    • F20 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - General
    • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nst:samfok:15613. 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: Anne Larsen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/isontno.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.