In this talk, Jordan Center Postdoctoral Fellow Delgerjargal Uvsh will explore how Russia’s oil- and gas-producing regions dealt with two instances of declines in their natural resource revenues and how their strategies affected economic activities in their territories. Based on analyses of quantitative and qualitative data, she argues that when faced with a long-lasting decline in their resource revenues, Russia’s oil and gas producing regions aimed to compensate for the lost revenues by expanding their tax base. This strategy led them to implement policies to support small businesses and private investment, reduce administrative burden, and improve the overall institutions and investment climate. In contrast, when these regions encountered a negative shock that the regional governments perceived to be temporary, they did not engage in strategies that benefitted business activities. More broadly, this research illustrates when and how resource-dependent economies can successfully fend of the “resource curse."
Delgerjargal Uvsh received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2020. She conducts research and teaches primarily in the field of comparative politics, with a focus on post-Soviet politics, the political economy of natural-resource dependence, institutional and regime change, and research methods. Using Russia as a critical case, Delgerjargal’s book project, “Reversal of the Resource Curse? Negative Revenue Shocks and Development in Russia and Beyond,” develops a theory of when and how declines in natural-resource revenue (negative revenue shocks) incentivize political elites to support private business activity and reverse the “resource curse.” Delgerjargal expanded her interest in the relationship between natural resources and institutional changes in a forthcoming book chapter, where she explores the short-term effects of negative revenue shocks on political regimes. Another extension, published in Land Use Policy, analyzes novel satellite data on forest-cover change in western Russian regions and shows that the dynamics of forest growth and deforestation have been different in the first versus the second decade of Russia’s transition. You can read more about Delgerjargal’s work at www.delgerjargaluvsh.com.
Watch the event recording on YouTube here.
