Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts

Oil curse in Brazil

Municipalities that receive oil windfalls report significant increases in spending on infrastructure, education, health, and transfers to households. However, the windfalls do not trickle down and much of the money goes missing. Indeed, oil revenues increase the size of municipal workers’ houses but not the size of other residents’ houses.
That is Francesco Caselli and Guy Michaels, via Chris Blattman.

They also mention more media mention of corruption and federal police operations in municipalities with higher oil outputs. On the latter I am skeptical - I used to live in Rio, and I don't think the favelas and their problems have anything to do with the area's substantial resource income - but nevertheless their overall findings ring true to me.

Brazil must beat corruption, not Dutch disease

I've already posted twice on Brazil's oil today, so I promise this is the last one. I've been critical of the media coverage overall, but I liked this Reuters analysis which concluded that of the elements of the resource curse, Brazil should worry more about corruption and less about Dutch disease.

Also, Forbes has a good little "factbox" on other countries' experience with the oil curse. Basically Norway made out fine, and no one has been able to replicate their success since.