This paper studies the effects of oil rent on development using a unique panel dataset describing worldwide oil discoveries and extractions. First, we revisit the so-called curse of oil, which contends that oil rent hinders economic development. Exploiting cross-country variations in the timing...

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...

We study the spatial distribution of the effect of oil and gas revenues on Brazilian municipalities, using variations in the international prices of oil and gas to establish causality. Oil and gas revenues increase economic activity, measured by night-time light emissions, in oil-producing...

We analyze the effects of different regimes of control rights over critical resources on the total domestic income of open economies. We consider home control, foreign control, and international partnerships in a theoretical model where contracts are incomplete, resource exploitation requires...

We study experimentally a two-stage common pool resource game. In the first stage, selected members of the group determine the level of protection for the resource. The protected fraction of the resource is equally shared among group members. In the second stage, the unprotected fraction of the...

We explore the effect of historical ethnic borders on contemporary conflict in Africa. We document that both the intensive and extensive margins of contemporary conflict are higher close to historical ethnic borders. Exploiting variations across artificial regions within an ethnicity's...

We explore the effect of historical ethnic borders on contemporary conflict in Africa. We document that both the intensive and extensive margins of contemporary conflict are higher close to historical ethnic borders. Exploiting variations across artificial regions within an ethnicity's...