Investigating the Effect of Oil Rent on Agricultural Sector Employment in Iran’s Economy

Abstract

The effect of natural resources abundance on the economic performance of resource-rich countries shows different results. In this regard, the results of some studies justify the resource curse phenomenon in rich countries based on the Dutch disease and the political economy of the resource curse hypothesis. In this paper, the role of oil rent (% of GDP) on the employment of agricultural in Iran by the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) method has been examined during the 1345-1400 period. The results of model estimation show that the oil rent has a negative and significant effect on the agricultural sector employment, whereby the increase in the natural resources rent has harmed the employment of agricultural sector, and it has not been blessing for this sector. It supports the existence of Dutch disease and the political economy of recourse curse hypothesis in the agricultural sector in Iran.

Keywords

• oil rent
• agricultural sector employment
• autoregressive distributed lag method
• iran’s economy