We examine the effects of oil rents on corruption and state stability exploiting the exogenous within-country variation of a new measure of oil rents for a panel of 31 oil-exporting countries during the period 1992 to 2005. We find that an increase in oil rents significantly increases...

Some natural resources-oil and minerals in particular-exert a negative and nonlinear impact on growth via their deleterious impact on institutional quality. We show this result to be very robust. The Nigerian experience provides telling confirmation of this aspect of natural resources. Waste and...

Fiscal policy in oil-producing countries can be profoundly affected by oil revenue uncertainty and volatility. Policy formulation should factor in the exhaustibility of the natural resources and aim at reducing oil revenue volatility passed on to the economy. Past fiscal policy in Nigeria has...

This paper provides a brief overview of the evolution of exchange rate policy in the Islamic Republic of Iran from 1993 to 2002 and reviews the basic criteria for the choice of the exchange rate regime in the medium term. The analysis highlights the merits of an intermediate regime which would...

Starting in 2005, nontax revenue in Georgia is expected to rise significantly, in the form of transit fees for oil transported through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline. Transit fees for gas transported through the South Caucasus Pipeline are expected to start in 2007. This paper discusses...

This paper discusses fiscal surveillance criteria for the countries of the Central African Monetary and Economic Union (CEMAC), most of which depend heavily on oil exports. At present, the CEMAC''s macroeconomic surveillance exercise sets as fiscal target a floor on the basic budgetary balance....

Iran has received much attention from a geopolitical and regional standpoint, but its economic challenges have not attracted a similar degree of interest. With a population of 69 million, considerable hydrocarbon resources, a dynamic and entrepreneurial middle class, and a relatively...

How can a country turn oil revenues into a blessing rather than a curse? With growing international interest in new offshore oil deposits in sub-Saharan Africa, there is also greater scrutiny of the reasons why many oil-producing countries in the region have experienced disappointing economic...

This paper explores the predictive ability of volatility in the crude oil market. A comparison in the CBOE crude oil volatility index (OVX), GARCH and Stochastic Volatility Models are employed to investigate the forecasting performance. The daily price dataset, spanning from 2010 to 2022,...

The paper examines the volatility predictive ability of the CBOE crude oil volatility index (OVX), GARCH and Stochastic Volatility Models in the crude oil market. Specifically, the dynamics of two major crude oil pricing benchmarks - Brent in Europe and WTI in America are compared. OVX index is...