Abstract
Despite the abundance of natural resources (especially oil) in OPEC member countries, for various reasons, these countries do not have favorable economic growth. One of the main reasons is that financial markets in these countries are not deep enough. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of natural resource exports on economic growth given the level of financial deepening of OPEC member countries (including Angola, Iran, Indonesia, Ecuador, Qatar, Republic of the Congo, Kuwait, Gabon, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Algeria). For this mean, composite data and panel threshold regression model in the period 2000-2019 were used. The results show that the threshold value for the financial development variable (internal credit of banks to the private sector) equals 4.19. The effect of the abundance of natural resources (oil) on economic growth through the financial development channel is positive and significant for the first regime where the rate of financial deepening is below the threshold, and for the second regime where the rate of financial deepening is above the threshold is not significant. Also in the threshold model, the coefficients of the impact of population growth and inflation on economic growth are negative and the coefficients of the impact of trade openness and gross investment on economic growth have been positive. It seems that to positively affect oil exports on the economic growth of OPEC member countries at high levels of financial development, it is necessary to pay attention to all components of financial development and deepen it.
Keywords: Natural resource abundance, Economic growth, Financial development, threshold panel model, OPEC member countries