New Evidence from Oil Rent and Economic Growth in OPEC Countries: An Application of the Hybrid Model of Threshold Markov Switching Model

The relationship between oil and economic growth is one of the most important issues in the oil-exporting countries that the nature of the relationship is important for the economic policymakers of these countries. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of oil rent on economic growth in OPEC countries during the period 1961-2017. For this purpose, using the new and hybrid threshold Markov switching model, the threshold effects of oil rent on economic growth regimes have been modeled. The results of the estimation of the research model indicate that oil rent has a nonlinear and threshold effect on economic growth regimes, so that as long as the share of oil rents in gross domestic product is less than 30.9% percent, oil rent has a positive effect on economic growth but after exceeding the threshold, oil rent has had a significant negative impact on economic growth. The results also show that economic growth in OPEC countries has two high and low growth regimes that the high-growth regime has lower durability than the low-growth regime.