How does high dependence on natural resources affect income inequality? Surprisingly little is known about the impact of high dependence on primary goods on income distribution. Building on insights from the resource curse literature, this paper studies the relationship between income shocks...

This paper examines the impact of oil price and quantity shocks on income inequalityin the US. Using micro income data, we construct measures of pre-tax money incomeinequality at the state level for the period 1980 –2017. We find that a $10 increase in oilprice increases the 90/10 ratio of...

Surprisingly little is known about the impact of natural resource booms on income inequality in resource rich countries (Ross, 2007). This paper develops a theory, in the context of a two sector growth model in which learning-by-doing drives growth, to explain the time path of inequality...

We examine the causal effect of natural resource discoveries on income inequality using the synthetic control method on data from 1947 to 2009. We focus on the natural discoveries in Denmark, Netherlands and Norway in the 1960-1970s and use top 1% and top 10% income share as the measure of...

This paper documents the negative link between the age of Russian cities and their average wage. This link is robust to various definitions of city age and sample censuring, the inclusion of regional and time fixed effects, dependent variable spatial lag and many urban characteristics. This link...

Norway is often referred to as the prime example of a country that has achieved high growth and low income inequality despite its vast natural resources. This contrasts sharply with many other resource abundant countries, which raises the questions why Norway has succeeded while many other...

Using a most available data on a sample of 26 developing countries, this paper addresses the effect of oil rent on inequality. Mobilizing dynamic panel data specification over the period 1996-2008, econometric results yields two important findings. First, there is a non-linear (U shaped)...

Resource-rich economies and ethnically divided societies are linked to higher income inequality at the macro level. Our goal is to empirically examine the income inequality and welfare effects of the direct distribution of resource rents and subsequent taxation in Iran. We use rich micro survey...

Our goal is to examine the income inequality and welfare effects of the direct distribution of resource rents and subsequent taxation in Iran. We use rich micro survey data covering more than 36,000 Iranian households in 2009. Our micro-simulations show that the direct distribution of resource...

This paper is intended to demonstrate, in theory as well as empirically, how increased dependence on natural resources tends to go along with less rapid economic growth and greater inequality in the distribution of income across countries. On the other hand, public policy in support of education...