Venezuela is a textbook example of a resource-dependent country — between 1950 and 2008, oil generated over a trillion dollars of income for the state. Nevertheless, Venezuela currently combines an economy that is stagnant, despite high oil prices, with an increasingly authoritarian...

We use data on political beliefs (broadly, left-right position, meritocracy and origins of poverty) to discuss Venezuela's economic institutions. Our starting point is the large role attributed to beliefs in determining the economic system and the extent of government intervention (see, for...