We examine the impact of natural resources on economic growth in Russia's regions since the introduction of the mineral tax in 2002. Using novel measures of natural resource rents produced in, but not necessarily appropriated by the regions (mineral tax collections), we demonstrate that mineral wealth has not significantly affected regional economic growth since 2002, although mineral-rich regions are significantly richer than the other regions. These results are contrary to the "resource curse" hypothesis. The absence of growth benefits to resource-endowed regions, however, is also at odds with the clearly beneficial impact of natural resources on the economic growth of t the country as a whole. We conclude that the Russian central government was successful in taxing away incremental regional resource rents during 2002-2011, but the regions preserved their pre-2002 benefits derived from mineral wealth.
We use the 2005-2012 data for Russian regions to show that higher regional institutional quality strongly benefits institutionally-dependent manufacturing sectors in terms of both gross output levels and growth rates. Unlike the existing literature on this topic, which uses crosssectional or pooled specifications, we focus on panel data analysis. This approach mitigates endogeneity concerns and allows for calculating full marginal effects of institutions on manufacturing sectors with different degrees of institutional dependence. Our results imply that significant institutional improvements are needed in order for the Russian economy to diversify away from heavy reliance on oil and natural gas.
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