Prudent Management of Oil Revenues: Impacts of Government Capital Expenditures in Azerbaijan

Abstract

Azerbaijan is an oil rich country facing three severe problems at the same time: economic volatility, the need to promote industrial diversification and the recent sharp fall in oil prices which many expect to continue. It is thus a highly appropriate time to conduct a study for this resource-rich country that would relate its insufficient and ineffective industrial diversification to the effectiveness of its efforts to overcome these problems, including the encouragement of FDI, the creation of its State Oil Fund and the establishment of a fiscal rule. To this end, in this study we pull together empirical evidence concerning the allocation of oil windfall gains, the quality of the country’s budgetary institutions and its State Oil Fund and their effects on Azerbaijan’s budgetary outcomes. But, more uniquely, we develop and apply some models to capture the long terms effects of oil prices and fiscal management on industrial diversification, where we find the efforts to date to have fallen far short of what is needed. Our analysis leads us to suggestions for much needed improvements in policy.

Keywords: Oil Windfall Gains, Government Capital Expenditures, Non-Oil Diversification, Industrial Policy

JEL Classification: Q01, Q32, Q43, H54, L52, O23, O25, O53