Projects

Spatial Inference on Oil and Economic Development

Past and current research on oil and economic development mainly focuses on differences across countries or changes in country aggregates (such as total oil income and GDP, or GDP growth) over time. A main finding in much of this research is that oil income, or oil wealth, is negatively correlated with a range of indicators of economic and political development, such as the level of income, income growth, the level of democracy, civil conflict and war, and corruption. However, less is known about the within-country relationship between oil and economic, social, and political development: For example, how does the oil wealth in one part of a country affect income, growth, conflict and corruption in other parts of the country?

Using a new and comprehensive proprietary data set on the exact location and characteristics of all known oil fields in the world, we aim at describing and analyzing the spatial relationship between oil production and social, economic, and political development within countries. The project is headed by me and the project team consists of researchers from a broad range of countries and institutions, such as BI Norwegian Business School (Oslo, Norway), UiS (Stavanger, Norway), NTNU (Trondheim, Norway), UCLA (Los Angeles, USA), Queen Mary University of London (London, UK), University of Copenhagen (Copenhagen, Denmark), and SITE at Stockholm School of Economics (Stockholm, Sweden).

Work in progress (co-)authored by me (preliminary titles):

Declining Oil Production Leads to More Democratic Governments (CGD Working Paper), with Jonas Hveding Hamang (BI) and Michael Ross (UCLA)

Quantifying Supply-Side Policies, with Lassi Ahlvik (University of Helsinki), Jonas Hveding Hamang (BI), and Torfinn Harding (UiS)

Oil Infrastructure and Economic Development, with Sebastian Axbard (QMUL) and Andrea Tesei (QMUL)

More information about the project can be found here.