Fast, Revenue Maximizing, or Right: Institutional Design Reactions of North Sea Energy States to their Windfalls.

How might the analyst explain the wide difference in the approach to management of resource windfalls? .x000d.In 1965, oil was found in the North Sea, following a 1959 discovery of gas. The discovery of oil and natural gas in the North Sea presents the analyst with a unique opportunity to comparatively examine the reaction of states to resource windfalls. The oil and gas finds of the North Sea overlap territorial water holdings of several states. Boundary lines among the sharing states had been established as part of the Convention on the Continental Shelf of 1958 (Dam, 1965): in terms of production, the most significant of these states are the United Kingdom and Norway, followed by Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany. .x000d..x000d.Each of these states selected a different approach to managing their new-found windfalls. While unit heterogeneity might be forwarded as a cause, such an explanation is cursory at best. Stronger explanations for the variations in resource management lie in a comparative examination of the states' institutions of political economy and these institutions' history. These variations in political economic institutions explain the variation between resource management regimes, and in the evolution of same over time. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]