IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/fubsbe/201914.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Developing countries' political cycles and the resource curse: Venezuela's case

Author

Listed:
  • Márquez-Velázquez, Alejandro

Abstract

The resource curse literature's main lesson is that developing and natural resource-rich countries should save most of their oil windfalls in foreign currency. Moreover, the political cycle literature's recent contributions predict stronger cycles in these countries. This paper investigates how political cycles might explain low oil windfall savings. Using Venezuela's case, the paper argues that power concentration during periods of oil price explosiveness leads to increased public investment in prestige projects aimed at increasing the incumbent's − or his party's − re-election probabilities. The article backs the argument analyzing the Chavista democratic period of 1999-2016. It also identifies parallels with Venezuela's 1970-1988 period.

Suggested Citation

  • Márquez-Velázquez, Alejandro, 2019. "Developing countries' political cycles and the resource curse: Venezuela's case," Discussion Papers 2019/14, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:fubsbe:201914
    DOI: 10.17169/refubium-25367
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/204449/1/1677700653.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17169/refubium-25367?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alberto Alesina & Filipe R. Campante & Guido Tabellini, 2008. "Why is Fiscal Policy Often Procyclical?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(5), pages 1006-1036, September.
    2. Brender, Adi & Drazen, Allan, 2005. "Political budget cycles in new versus established democracies," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(7), pages 1271-1295, October.
    3. Halvor Mehlum & Karl Moene & Ragnar Torvik, 2006. "Institutions and the Resource Curse," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 116(508), pages 1-20, January.
    4. Krueger, Anne O, 1990. "Government Failures in Development," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 9-23, Summer.
    5. Santiso, Javier & Dayton-Johnson, Jeff (ed.), 2012. "The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Political Economy," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199747504.
    6. Betty Agnani & Amaia Iza, 2011. "Growth in an Oil Abundant Economy: The Case of Venezuela," Journal of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(1), pages 61-79, May.
    7. Matsen, Egil & Torvik, Ragnar, 2005. "Optimal Dutch disease," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 494-515, December.
    8. Lammerding, Marc & Stephan, Patrick & Trede, Mark & Wilfling, Bernd, 2013. "Speculative bubbles in recent oil price dynamics: Evidence from a Bayesian Markov-switching state-space approach," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 491-502.
    9. Pedro A. Almoguera & Christopher C. Douglas & Ana María Herrera, 2011. "Testing for the cartel in OPEC: non-cooperative collusion or just non-cooperative?," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 27(1), pages 144-168, Spring.
    10. Caspi, Itamar & Katzke, Nico & Gupta, Rangan, 2018. "Date stamping historical periods of oil price explosivity: 1876–2014," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 582-587.
    11. Clémence Vergne, 2009. "Democracy, elections and allocation of public expenditures in developing countries," Post-Print hal-00368509, HAL.
    12. Jean Beuve & Stéphane Saussier & Julie de Brux, 2018. "An Economic Analysis of Public-Private Partnerships," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-02139523, HAL.
    13. Robinson, James A. & Torvik, Ragnar & Verdier, Thierry, 2006. "Political foundations of the resource curse," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 447-468, April.
    14. van Wijnbergen, Sweder J G, 1984. "The 'Dutch Disease': A Disease after All?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 94(373), pages 41-55, March.
    15. Corden, W Max & Neary, J Peter, 1982. "Booming Sector and De-Industrialisation in a Small Open Economy," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 92(368), pages 825-848, December.
    16. Vergne, Clémence, 2009. "Democracy, elections and allocation of public expenditures in developing countries," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 63-77, March.
    17. Klein, Fabio Alvim & Sakurai, Sergio Naruhiko, 2015. "Term limits and political budget cycles at the local level: evidence from a young democracy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 21-36.
    18. Fabio Alvim Klein & Sergio Naruhiko Sakurai, 2016. "Term Limits And Political Budget Cycles At The Local Level: Evidence From A Young Democracy," Anais do XLII Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 42nd Brazilian Economics Meeting] 052, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    19. Shi, Shuping & Arora, Vipin, 2012. "An application of models of speculative behaviour to oil prices," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 115(3), pages 469-472.
    20. Klomp, Jeroen & de Haan, Jakob, 2016. "Election cycles in natural resource rents: Empirical evidence," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 79-93.
    21. Sebastián Nieto Parra & Javier Santiso, 2009. "Revisiting Political Budget Cycles in Latin America," OECD Development Centre Working Papers 281, OECD Publishing.
    22. Agénor, Pierre-Richard, 2016. "Optimal fiscal management of commodity price shocks," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 183-196.
    23. John Parsons, 2010. "Black Gold and Fool’s Gold: Speculation in the Oil Futures Market," Economía Journal, The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association - LACEA, vol. 0(Spring 20), pages 81-116, January.
    24. Leonardo Vera, 2015. "Venezuela 1999–2014: Macro-Policy, Oil Governance and Economic Performance," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 57(3), pages 539-568, September.
    25. Bofinger, Peter & Haas, Thomas, 2018. "A simple microeconomic model for the analysis of Vollgeld," W.E.P. - Würzburg Economic Papers 99, University of Würzburg, Department of Economics.
    26. Philip R. Lane & Aaron Tornell, 1999. "The Voracity Effect," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(1), pages 22-46, March.
    27. William F. Maloney & Daniel Lederman, 2008. "In search of the Missing Resource Curse," Economía Journal, The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association - LACEA, vol. 0(Fall 2008), pages 1-57, August.
    28. William D. Nordhaus, 1975. "The Political Business Cycle," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 42(2), pages 169-190.
    29. Sachs, Jeffrey D. & Warner, Andrew M., 2001. "The curse of natural resources," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(4-6), pages 827-838, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Collier, Paul & Goderis, Benedikt, 2012. "Commodity prices and growth: An empirical investigation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(6), pages 1241-1260.
    2. Klomp, Jeroen & de Haan, Jakob, 2016. "Election cycles in natural resource rents: Empirical evidence," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 79-93.
    3. Collier, Paul & Goderis, Benedikt, 2008. "Commodity Prices, Growth, and the Natural Resource Curse: Reconciling a Conundrum," MPRA Paper 17315, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Kaznacheev, Peter, 2013. "Resource Rents and Economic Growth: Economic and institutional development in countries with a high share of income from the sale of natural resources. Analysis and recommendations based on internatio," EconStor Research Reports 121950, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    5. Kolstad, Ivar & Wiig, Arne, 2009. "It's the rents, stupid! The political economy of the resource curse," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(12), pages 5317-5325, December.
    6. Eric Dubois, 2016. "Political Business Cycles 40 Years after Nordhaus," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-01291401, HAL.
    7. Ohad Raveh & Yacov Tsur, 2018. "Resource Windfalls and Public Debt: The Role of Political Myopia," OxCarre Working Papers 205, Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies, University of Oxford.
    8. Frankel, Jeffrey A., 2012. "The Natural Resource Curse: A Survey of Diagnoses and Some Prescriptions," Scholarly Articles 8694932, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
    9. Tiba, Sofien & Frikha, Mohamed, 2019. "The controversy of the resource curse and the environment in the SDGs background: The African context," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 437-452.
    10. Eoin McGuirk, 2013. "The illusory leader: natural resources, taxation and accountability," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 154(3), pages 285-313, March.
    11. Frederick van der Ploeg, 2011. "Natural Resources: Curse or Blessing?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(2), pages 366-420, June.
    12. Eric Dubois, 2016. "Political business cycles 40 years after Nordhaus," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 166(1), pages 235-259, January.
    13. Matsen, Egil & Torvik, Ragnar, 2005. "Optimal Dutch disease," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 494-515, December.
    14. Mohsen Mehrara, Mohsen & Alhosseini, Seyedmohammadsadegh & Bahramirad, Duman, 2008. "Resource curse and institutional quality in oil countries," MPRA Paper 16456, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Mar 2009.
    15. Chekouri, Sidi Mohamed & Benbouziane, Mohamed & Chibi, Abderrahim, 2017. "Oil rents and institutional quality: empirical evidence from Algeria," MPRA Paper 81862, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Sep 2017.
    16. Elisabeth Hermann Frederiksen, 2006. "Spending Natural Resource Revenues in an Altruistic Growth Model," EPRU Working Paper Series 06-09, Economic Policy Research Unit (EPRU), University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    17. Eric Dubois, 2016. "Political Business Cycles 40 Years after Nordhaus," Post-Print hal-01291401, HAL.
    18. Raveh, Ohad & Tsur, Yacov, 2020. "Reelection, growth and public debt," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    19. Anne D. Boschini & Jan Pettersson & Jesper Roine, 2007. "Resource Curse or Not: A Question of Appropriability," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 109(3), pages 593-617, September.
    20. Vicente, Pedro C., 2010. "Does oil corrupt? Evidence from a natural experiment in West Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 28-38, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    oil windfalls; political cycles; resource curse; Venezuela;
    All these keywords.

    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:zbw:fubsbe:201914. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fwfubde.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.