Oil and Economic Performance in Iraq: A Blessing or a Curse!

The prevailing view refers that Iraq's economic performance has been constrained by the annual influx of oil revenues. This paper aims to verify whether the oil wealth in Iraq is a boon for the economy!. The different relationships are estimated to resolve the evidence. It is assumed that concluded rentier revenues caused harm to the performance of society as much as they benefited the sectors. Empirical work provides an explanation as well as an estimation of performance and growth trends. The adopted methodology is to estimate regression relationships for simple, multiple, and step-wise models. The work reached that 70% of performance and growth depend on oil revenues, in conjunction and equivalence. The total consumption was accompanied by a period of negative contributions of foreign direct investment, with a slight influx of imports. The risky aspect of oil wealth lies in the fact that it is one-sided, with consumption expenditures, not investment, in explaining performance behavior. As for the growth in imports, it largely explains the behavior of economic growth, to the exclusion of other economic variables.