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Middle East and Central Asia > Saudi Arabia

You are looking at 1 - 3 of 3 items for :

  • Type: Journal Issue x
  • Resource Booms x
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Cover IMF Working Papers
Natural Resource Booms in the Modern Era: Is the curse still alive?
Mr. Andrew M. Warner
The global boom in hydrocarbon, metal and mineral prices since the year 2000 created huge economic rents - rents which, once invested, were widely expected to promote productivity growth in other parts of the booming economies, creating a lasting legacy of the boom years. This paper asks whether this has happened. To properly address this question the empirical strategy must look behind the veil of the booming sector because that, by definition, will boom in a boom. So the paper considers new data on GDP per person outside of the resource sector. Despite having vast sums to invest, GDP growth per-capita outside of the booming sectors appears on average to have been no faster during the boom years than before. The paper finds no country in which (non-resource) growth per-person has been statisticallysignificantly higher during the boom years. In some Gulf states, oil rents have financed a migration-facilitated economic expansion with small or negative productivity gains. Overall, there is little evidence the booms have left behind the anticipated productivity transformation in the domestic economies. It appears that current policies are, overall, prooving insufficient to spur lasting development outside resource intensive sectors.
Keywords:
WP; natural resource; real GDP; civil war; Resource Booms; Dutch Disease; Economic Growth; Public Investment; boom period; resource boom; counterfactual period; GDP per-capita; resource rent; Natural resources; Public investment spending; Human capital; Public expenditure review; Oil; Eastern Europe; Africa; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Desynchronized: The Comovement of Non-Hydrocarbon Business Cycles in the GCC
Mr. Serhan Cevik
This paper investigates the empirical characteristics of business cycles and the extent of cyclical comovement in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, using various measures of synchronization for non-hydrocarbon GDP and constituents of aggregate demand during the period 1990-2010. By applying the Christiano-Fitzgerald asymmetric band-pass filter and a mean corrected concordance index, the paper identifies the degree of non-hydrocarbon business cycle synchronization?one of the main prerequisites for countries considering to establish a monetary union. The empirical results show low and heterogeneous synchronization in non-hydrocarbon business cycles across the GCC economies, and a decline in the degree of synchronicity in the 2000s, if Kuwait is excluded from the sample, partly because of divergent fiscal policies.
Keywords:
WP; GCC country; aggregate demand; Business cycles; business cycle synchronization; band-pass filter; concordance; GCC economy; Non-hydrocarbon business cycle frequency; business cycle analysis; pairwise correlation coefficients; business cycle desynchronization; Monetary unions; Private consumption; Government consumption; Public investment spending; Asia and Pacific; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Commodity Windfalls, Polarization, and Net Foreign Assets: Panel Data Evidenceon the Voracity Effect
Markus Bruckner
and
Mr. Rabah Arezki
This paper examines the effect that windfalls from international commodity price booms have on net foreign assets in a panel of 145 countries during the period 1970-2007. The main finding is that windfalls from international commodity price booms lead to a significant increase in net foreign assets, but only in countries that are homogeneous. In polarized countries, net foreign assets significantly decreased. To explain this asymmetry, the paper shows that in polarized countries commodity windfalls lead to large increases in government spending, political corruption, and the risk of expropriation, with no overall effect on GDP per capita growth. The paper's findings are consistent with theoretical models of the current account that have a built-in voracity effect.
Keywords:
WP; commodity; revenue windfall; country; Commodity Windfalls; Net Foreign Assets; Polarization; Political Economy; commodity windfall; world commodity supply; exported commodity goods lead; hydrocarbon commodity price; commodity price boom; Foreign assets; Commodity prices; Export price indexes; Private investment; Africa; Global