Comparative Economic Studies

, Volume 56, Issue 4, pp 517–535 | Cite as

The Effect of Oil on Regional Growth in Russia and the United States: A Comparative Analysis

  • Michael Alexeev
  • Andrey Chernyavskiy
Symposium Article
First Online:

Abstract

Using comparable 2002–2011 data, we examine the effect of oil on growth of Russia’s regions and American states. Although Russia’s oil regions are richer than other regions, they did not grow faster, while US oil producers grew faster than other states. We attribute these differences to different taxation systems in Russia and the United States, with the Russian central government taxing away a larger share of incremental oil rents in the 2000s than did its US counterpart. Moreover, although oil rents attracted labor to oil-producing regions both in Russia and the United States, only in the US oil rents led to higher investment growth.

Keywords

regional growth oil rents taxation of oil 

JEL Classifications

P52 R11 Q32 
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Notes

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the participants of the Pacific Rim 2014 Conference for their valuable comments. Alexeev’s work on this topic was in part supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, grant No. 14.U04.31.0002 administered through the NES CSDSI. Chernyavskiy’s research on this topic has received funding from the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics.

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Copyright information

© Association for Comparative Economics 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  • Michael Alexeev
    • 1
  • Andrey Chernyavskiy
    • 2
  1. 1.Department of EconomicsIndiana UniversityBloomingtonUSA
  2. 2.Research University-Higher School of Economics, Institute Development CenterMoscowRussia

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