The oil crash of 2014-2015 may trigger a wave of democratization in crude-exporting countries across the world, Renaissance Capital said on Tuesday.
The emerging market-focused investment bank based its analysis on the oil price collapse of 1985. It said this event helped trigger democratization in oil-exporting places including Mexico, Iran, Algeria and the former Soviet Union between 1988 and 1990.
"We wonder if the 2014-2015 oil price fall may provoke similar democratization in Russia, Iran and Venezuela in 2018-2020," Charles Robertson, chief economist at Renaissance Capital, said in a report on Tuesday.
He said the sample of countries was too small to provide a high degree of certainty on this scenario, but that investors should be "prepared for the unlikely to happen.