International politics affects oil trade. But does it affect the oil-exporting developing countries more? We construct a firm-level dataset for all U.S. oil-importing companies over 1986-2008 to examine how these firms respond to changes in "political distance" between the U.S. and her trading partners, measured by divergence in their UN General Assembly voting patterns. Consistent with previous macro evidence, we first show that individual firms diversify their oil imports politically, even after controlling for unobserved firm heterogeneity. We conjecture that the political pattern of oil imports from these individual firms is driven by hold-up risks, because oil trade is often associated with backward vertical FDI. To the extent that developing countries have higher hold-up risks because of their weaker institutions, the political effect on oil trade should be more significant in the developing world. We find that oil import decisions are indeed more elastic when firms import from developing countries, although the reverse is true in the short run. Our results suggest that international politics can affect oil revenue and hence long-term development in the developing world.
権利
Copyrights 日本貿易振興機構（ジェトロ）アジア経済研究所 / Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization (IDE-JETRO) http://www.ide.go.jp
雑誌名
IDE Discussion Paper
雑誌名(英)
IDE Discussion Paper
巻
459
発行年
2014-03-01
出版者
Institute of Developing Economies (IDE-JETRO)
著者版フラグ
publisher
日本十進分類法
678
JEL分類
JEL:F13 - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
JEL:F51 - International Conflicts; Negotiations; Sanctions
JEL:F59 - International Relations and International Political Economy: Other
JEL:Q34 - Natural Resources and Domestic and International Conflicts
地域/国名
発展途上国
アメリカ合衆国
キーワード(LSH)
Developing countries
United States
International trade
Exports
Petroleum industry
International relations
Foreign investments
Energy resources
International politics
FDI-based imports
Hold-up risk
Energy security
The effects of international politics on oil-exporting developing countries
本文
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