CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2015
| Author | Papp, Róbert |
|---|---|
| Title | Natural Resource Rents and Public Employment: An Empirical Investigation |
| Summary | Excess public employment in natural resource-rich countries is claimed to be a mechanism through which the resource curse operates. Previous studies posit that governments distribute natural resource – in particular, oil – rents partly through overemployment and/or above-market wages in public sectors, which leads to the crowding out of more productive private employment and the entrenchment of political clientelism. Empirical evidence for this argument has so far been only anecdotal. I fill this gap by statistically analyzing data from 91 countries, mostly from 1999-2011, on government wage bills and measures of dependence on and abundance in various natural resources. My most robust and important finding is that oil rents have an economically and statistically significant negative effect on how much governments spend on compensating their employees. This may reflect lower investments in state capacity to tax and regulate, which contributes to resource curse effects. |
| Supervisor | Dorsch, Michael |
| Department | School of Public Policy MPA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2015/papp_robert.pdf |
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