This paper examines choice of occupation between productive activities and rent-seeking in an oil-dominated economy where oil rent is the major source of public revenue. Three regimes can occur: no rent-seeking, coexistence of rent-seeking and of productive activity and full rent-seeking. The economy may get trapped in each regime unless it shocked by a substantial change in exogenous parts of reward structure. In particular in the latter case the extraction and liquidation of oil is the only productive activity. Oil boom in general rewards both productive and unproductive activities unequally and hence affects occupational choice. We identify situations where boom favours misallocation of talent and the extent of diversion that boom induces dominates its income effect. Our model also captures voracity effect where fiscal transfers grow more proportional than the size of windfall itself. Boom may however cause changing of regime from coexistence of both activities to full rent-seeking even when the voracity effect is not operative. In this case boom has a permanent effect and its aftermath persists even when the oil rent returns to its pre-boom level.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Department of Economics, University of York in its series Discussion Papers with number
01/11.
Length: Date of creation: Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:yor:yorken:01/11
Contact details of provider: Postal: Department of Economics and Related Studies, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, United Kingdom Phone: (0)1904 433776 Fax: (0)1904 433759 Email: Web page: http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/econ/ More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Paul Hodgson).
Find related papers by JEL classification: D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior H59 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Other J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity O53 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Asia including Middle East Q33 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation - - - Resource Booms (Dutch Disease)
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Did you know? Each page is provided with a technical contact, in case something is not right with the supplied information. See under "publisher info".