Scholars of political development have investigated the so-called oil curse, the idea that oil-rich countries tend not to develop democratic systems of governance, that “oil and democracy do not mix.” Framing this idea in the form of a hypothesis: In a comparison of countries, those having economies less dependent on oil wealth will be more democratic than will countries having economies more dependent on oil wealth. Consider the following data, which presents information for twenty countries with non-oil-dependent economies and fifteen countries with oil-dependent economies. The dependent variable is a 7-point level-of-democracy scale, with higher scores denoting more democracy. Here are the mean values and standard errors of the democracy scale for non-oil-dependent and oil-dependent countries.

a. State the null hypothesis for the non-oil-dependent/ oil-dependent comparison.
b. (i) Calculate the difference between the means of the democracy scale for non-oil-dependent and oil-dependent countries. (ii) Calculate the standard error of the difference. (iii) Calculate the t-statistic
c. Based on these results, suppose a researcher decides to reject the null hypothesis. Is this decision supported by the statistical evidence? Explain your answer.