This paper studies the effect of oil discoveries on economic growth in Brazilian municipalities for the period from 1940 to 2000. It uses a unique identification strategy which exploits data on the drilling of approximately 20,000 oil wells in Brazil since oil explorations began in the country....

This paper provides evidence of the causal impact of oil discoveries on development. Novel data on the drilling of 20,000 oil wells in Brazil allows us to exploit a quasi-experiment: Municipalities where oil was discovered constitute the treatment group, while municipalities with drilling but no...