Oil Windfalls (Caselli & Michaels)

Do oils windfalls improve living standards? evidence from Brazil by Francesco Caselli and Guy Michaels published by NBER (12/2009). “We use variation in oil output among Brazilian municipalities to investigate the effects of resource windfalls. We find muted effects of oil through market channels: offshore oil has no effect on municipal non-oil GDP or its composition, while onshore oil has only models effects on non-oil GDP composition. However, oil abundance causes municipal revenues and reported spending on a range of budgetary items to increase, mainly as a result of royalties paid by Petrobras.”