Institutional Quality, Natural Resource Rent, and Shadow Economy

Natural resource rent affects countries’ economies through various channels. Revenues from the natural resources sales are expected to boost countries' economic growth, but the economic experience of recent decades reveals the numerous economic problems in these countries, the most important of which may be the increase in the shadow economy size. Moreover, the institutions specify the significant economic axes like resources and assets distribution in the community, so that the level of institutional quality brings about the optimal resource directing and their allocation through economic stability and affects the shadow economy volume by increasing economic stability and reducing uncertainty. The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of natural resource rent and institutional quality on the shadow economy in 87 countries with high and low inflation rates from 2000 to 2018. The analysis method was system generalized-method of moments (System GMM). Smart PLS software was used to estimate the shadow economy. The results indicated that in both low-inflation and high-inflation countries, the increase in institutional quality has reduced the size of the shadow economy, and the rent of natural resources has had a positive relationship with the volume of the shadow economy