Natural resource extraction and civil conflict

Based on evidence linking natural resources to civil conflict, this paper studies two armed groups fighting to control a resource and possibly a second prize. Labor is used in the agricultural, resource extraction and conflict sectors, and the groups also buy a capital input to conflict subject to the constraint that capital spending cannot exceed resource earnings. I find that exogenous shocks can have different effects on conflict intensity depending on whether the credit constraint binds. In particular, international policies to ban natural resource exports from conflict zones (e.g. ‘blood diamonds’), raise agricultural productivity or limit the import of weapons will limit conflict intensity if the credit constraint binds. However, if the credit constraint does not bind, then the first two policies promote conflict, and so could even the third policy. The results therefore suggest some caution in international policymaking.     

Natural resources, democracy and corruption

We study how natural resources can feed corruption and how this effect depends on the quality of the democratic institutions. Our game-theoretic model predicts that resource rents lead to an increase in corruption if the quality of the democratic institutions is relatively poor, but not otherwise. We use panel data covering the period 1980-2004 and 124 countries to test this theoretical prediction. Our estimates confirm that the relationship between resource rents and corruption depends on the quality of the democratic institutions. Our main results hold when we control for the effects of income, time varying common shocks, regional fixed effects and various additional covariates. They are also robust across different samples, and to the use of various alternative measures of natural resources, democracy and corruption.     

Natural resources and international labour mobility

We study the relationship between natural resource wealth and (skilled and unskilled) emigration. The source data for international migration rates come from Brücker, Capuano, and Marfouk (2013) and measures of resource wealth from the World Bank database. We find that natural resource abundance reduces skilled emigration regardless of countries’ natural wealth, but that natural resources reduce unskilled emigration only in resource-rich countries.     

Natural resources damages from Chernobyl

Conclusion In this note, we have reported a simple attempt to examine the stability over time of willingness-to-pay measures. By running a simple regression equation, we are able to explain why the average willingness to pay fell between two consecutively hunting seasons. The most important explanation is that hunting in the second hunting season was affected by the nuclear radiation accident at Chernobyl. Almost 10 percent of the hunters stated that their willingness to pay was affected due to the fact that their moose meat was contaminated. Since there are 24,000 moose hunters in the county of Västerbotten, we arrive at a yearly loss of about SEK 2 million for the county. Assuming that our figures apply also at the national level, Swedish moose hunters suffered a loss of almost SEK 30 million in the 1986 hunting season. If the same impact on hunters was felt for, say, 3 to 4 years, the present value of the loss caused by the Chernobyl accident could amount to over SEK 100 million (assuming a discount rate of 5 percent). This is a considerable amount, given that Swedish moose hunters constitute only a small fraction of all those who were affected by the Chernobyl accident.     

Natural resources,economic growth and geography

Worldwide materials extraction increased by a factor of 8.4 over the course of the 20th century. In the meantime, global GDP and population increased by factors of about 22 and 4, respectively. This reveals that one of the key factors driving the increase in the exploitation of the resources was the growth in world population, although mitigated by the reduction in the intensity in the use of the resources in production. In this paper, we present a model that combines the theory of endogenous growth and the economy of natural resources, but taking into account the geographical distribution of economic activity. Indeed, the New Economic Geography provides insights about two elements that, although speeding up GDP growth, can curb the pressure on natural resources, namely the reduction in transports costs and a boost to pace of innovation.     

The geography of natural resources,ethnic inequality and civil conflicts

We study whether the spatial distribution of natural resources across different ethnic groups within countries causes spatial inequality and the incidence of armed conflict. By providing a theoretical rent-seeking model and analysing a set of geo-coded data for mines, night-time light emissions, local populations and ethnic homelands, we show that the spatial distribution of resources is a major driving factor of ethnic income inequality. Moreover, a spatially unequal distribution of natural resources induces rent-seeking behaviour and thus increases the risk of civil conflicts. Consequently, we extend the perspective of the resource curse to explain cross-country differences in income inequality and the onset of civil conflicts.     

Natural resources,education, and economic development

Economic growth since 1965 has varied inversely with the share of natural capital in national wealth across countries. Four main channels of transmission from abundant natural resources to stunted economic development are discussed: (a) the Dutch disease, (b) rent seeking, (c) overconfidence, and (d) neglect of education. Public expenditure on education relative to national income, expected years of schooling for girls, and gross secondary-school enrolment are all shown to be inversely related to the share of natural capital in national wealth across countries. Natural capital appears to crowd out human capital, thereby slowing down the pace of economic development.     

Modelling superannuation fund management function as a two-stage process for overall and stage-level performance appraisal

We assess superannuation fund performance in a multi-dimensional framework by conceptualizing its management function as a serially linked two sub-process; operational management (OM) and portfolio management (PM). The procedure that we adopt is data envelopment analysis (DEA). We express overall efficiency as a weighted average of the two sub-process efficiencies and assess overall efficiency conditional on their relative importance. We demonstrate application of our model using a sample of Australian superannuation funds. By appraising performance in two sample periods; crisis (2008) and relatively non-crisis (2014), we show that some findings of previous studies may be explained further through the proposed multi-stage framework. The best overall performer in 2008 is public sector funds and in 2014 it is corporate funds. Decomposition of overall efficiency reveals that public sector funds, on average, outperform all other fund categories in OM. However, no specific fund category dominates PM performance in both assessment periods. The driving force behind the observed inverse association between superannuation fund size and performance appears to be PM performance. Number of investment options offered is not associated with overall, OM and PM performance. Here, we demonstrate that performance appraisal from different aspects of management provide insightful information to superannuation fund managers.     

Natural resources and the tradeoff between authoritarianism and development

Why do African and Middle Eastern countries seem cursed by an abundance of natural resources yet USA, Australia and Norway seem blessed? A growing literature has argued that the benevolence or malignance of natural resources depends upon the quality of institutions. This paper offers a new explanation based on associational freedom and its interaction with the political system. The model predicts that natural resources have an adverse impact on economic performance and transition to democracy in authoritarian regimes but not in democracies. It also predicts that repression of associational freedom will be increasing in natural resources in authoritarian regimes. I test the model's predictions using fixed-effects regressions on an international panel from 1975 to 2000 and find support.     

Natural resources, capital accumulation and the resource curse

Early concern by economists for the effect of natural capital on economic growth gave way to complacency and neglect during the nineteenth century. Evidence has emerged, however, that since the 1960s the economic performance of low-income countries has been inversely related to their natural resource wealth. This relationship is not a deterministic one so policy counts. SEEA can help improve the policy and performance of resource-abundant low-income countries by reinforcing the rationale for the sound management of natural resources and also by providing an index of policy sustainability in the form of the net saving rate. This policy index, along with other measures such as a capital fund for sterilizing the rent, initiatives to increase the transparency of rent flows and the rigorous evaluation of alternative uses of additional public sector revenue can improve the efficiency by which natural resource rent is transformed into alternative forms of capital to sustain rising social welfare. Chad and Mauritania provide case studies to illustrate how SEEA and net saving can be used to diagnose policy failure and improve economic performance.     

Natural resources,technological progress,and economic modernization

The present inquiry focuses on the modernization perspectives of the commodity‐exporting countries through the lens of development economics. To this end, the study adopts the Kaldorian framework to address the modernization effects, epitomized in the absorption of surplus labor. To trace the process of economic modernization, the study augments Lewis’s dualistic economy model by the extractive sector. Three different scenarios for the management of resource revenues are scrutinized. An altruistic mode, which implies a pure redistribution of the revenues among the poor swaths of the population, protracts the process of economic modernization, requires a greater amount of capital stock, and harbors a greater risk of a poverty trap. This effect is less pronounced if the modern sector is more capital‐intensive. A productive mode, which elicits full reinvestment of the commodity revenues, in contrast, accelerates the pace of economic modernization. Further, predicated on the scrutiny of a more realistic scenario, a bargaining mode, the study derives the condition for a net positive (or negative) modernization effect. The study identifies technical progress alongside capital accumulation as a further important source of economic modernization.     

Fiscal-monetary policy coordination and debt management: a two-stage analysis

We study interactions between two policymakers, central bank and government, in managing public debt as the result of a two-stage game. In the first stage, the institutional regime is established. This determines the equilibrium solution for the second stage, in which a differential game is played between the two policymakers. It is shown that, if the policymakers can communicate before the game is played (multiple-equilibrium), coordination problems can be solved by using the concept of correlated equilibrium.

Evolution and the growth process: Natural selection of entrepreneurial traits

This research suggests that a Darwinian evolution of entrepreneurial spirit played a significant role in the process of economic development and the dynamics of inequality within and across societies. The study argues that entrepreneurial spirit evolved non-monotonically in the course of human history. In early stages of development, risk-tolerant, growth promoting traits generated an evolutionary advantage and their increased representation accelerated the pace of technological progress and the process of economic development. In mature stages of development, however, risk-averse traits gained an evolutionary advantage, diminishing the growth potential of advanced economies and contributing to convergence in economic growth across countries.     

Indicative bidding and a theory of two-stage auctions

Motivated by the practice of indicative bidding, which is commonly used in sales of complex and valuable assets, this paper develops a theory of two-stage auctions based on the assumption that learning valuation is costly. In various cases that characterize what can be learned in the due diligence stage, we show that no symmetric increasing equilibrium exists and hence efficient entry cannot be guaranteed under the current design of indicative bidding. However, by introducing auctions of entry rights with binding first-round bids, we show that efficient entry can be induced under certain conditions. We also show that optimal auctions are typically characterized by a limited number of final bidders, which justifies the general practice of conducting two-stage auctions in environments with costly entry.     

我国矿产资源产权的制度变迁与发展

我国的矿产资源产权制度,是在传统计划经济体制背景下建立起来的,产权不明晰和权能不完整的情况普遍存在。当前,随着我国改革开放和市场经济进程的加快,矿产资源的管理制度完善和产权制度改革也需要进一步深化,以适应不断发展的资源经济的要求。本文首先回顾了我国矿产资源产权制度的历史演变,在此基础上,针对当前存在的问题,从产权制度的界定、配置、交易以及保护等方面提出矿产资源产权制度改革的方向与路径。     

Cost and learning efficiency drivers in Australian schools: a two-stage network DEA approach

This article explore performance issues in Australian public schools, using a two-stage DEA network model, which accounts simultaneously for both cost and learning efficiency levels. In the cost efficiency stage, different types of expenses and investments are employed to support a given number of students, teachers and administrative staff. In the learning efficiency stage, these groups of individuals help to produce important outputs related to performance in student tests and school rankings. Results indicate that Australian public schools are heterogeneous. Policy implications are also discussed.     

Demand elasticities for food products in Brazil: a two-stage budgeting system

The object of this article is to estimate demand elasticities for a basket of staple food important for providing the caloric needs of Brazilian households. These elasticities are useful in the measurement of the impact of structural reforms on poverty. A two-stage demand system was constructed, based on data from Household Expenditure Surveys (POF) produced by IBGE (The Brazilian Bureau of Statistics) in 1987/88 and 1995/96. We have used panel data to estimate the model, and have calculated income, own-price, and cross-price elasticities for eight groups of goods and services and, in the second stage, for 11 sub groups of staple food products. We estimated those elasticities for the whole sample of consumers and for two income groups.     

Unbundling democracy: Political rights and civil liberties

Much recent political economy and political science literature views democracy in terms of political rights. This view, often referred to as electoral democracy, is particularly pronounced in the empirical literature. We reincorporate the role of civil liberties, which are at the core of modern democracy, in two ways. We identify four fundamental sources of potential differences in the evolution of political rights and civil liberties. We present systematic, robust and varied empirical evidence on the direct impact of two of these potential sources of differences using cross-national panel data and accounting for the modernization hypothesis. We obtain two noteworthy empirical results: civil liberties exhibit greater persistence than political rights in affecting subsequent outcomes; and, our main result, civil liberties are complementary to political rights when affecting subsequent outcomes, while the reverse is not the case. Consequently, one must incorporate civil liberties as a determinant of electoral democracy. More generally, both dimensions must be considered to understand the setbacks recently experienced by many democracies, despite their holding of free and fair elections.     

自然资源与区域经济增长:一个文献综述

自然资源是影响区域经济增长的重要因素,但是一直以来资源问题却没有引起主流经济学界的重视,包含有自然资源因素的增长模型是对区域经济增长模型的扩展。经验数据表明自然资源在某种程度上会挤出物质资本,并影响效率,从而形成区域经济增长过程中的"资源陷阱"现象,西方学者对此做出了理论上的解释。     

Growing up in a civil war and political participation: Evidence from Guatemala*

Guatemala experienced a 36-year-long civil war from 1960 to 1996. I use this event to understand whether growing up in an area of political violence has any impact on future political participation. I combine data from the distribution of the number of human rights violations during Guatemala's civil war with nationally representative data on political participation from the 2001 Living Standard Measurement Survey. Results suggest that exposure to conflict during youth affects political participation in adulthood. Exposure to conflict has a small negative association with formal political engagement and it has no effect on community participation. The results also indicate a negative relationship between growing up in an area of political violence and trust in the judicial system as adults.