Oil and ethnic inequality in Nigeria

Although it is known that ethnic biases exist in Africa, less is known about how these respond to natural resource prices. Many ethnically fragmented African countries depend on a small number commodities for their export base. Oil prices experienced in early life predict differential adult outcomes across Nigerian ethnic groups. Our difference-in-difference approach compares members of southern ethnicities to other Nigerians from the same birth cohort. This North-South distinction mirrors several economic, political, and religious cleavages in the country. Greater prices in a southern individual’s birth year predict several relative outcomes, including reduced fertility, delayed marriage, higher probabilities of working and having a skilled occupation, greater schooling, lower height, and greater BMI. These microeconomic impacts are explained by macroeconomic responses to oil prices; relatively, urban incomes increase, food production declines, and maternal labor intensifies in the South.     

Political openness and armed conflict: Evidence from local councils in Colombia

In this paper, I empirically investigate how the openness of political institutions to diverse representation can impact conflict-related violence. Regression discontinuity estimates that exploit plausibly exogenous variations in the number of councillors in Colombian municipalities show that political openness substantially decreases conflict-related violence, namely the killing of civilian non-combatants. Empirical evidence suggests that the lower level of political violence stems from parties with close links to armed groups having greater representation on larger municipal councils. Using data about the types of violence employed by these groups, and government representation, I argue that armed violence has decreased not because of power-sharing arrangements involving armed groups linked to the parties with more political representation, but rather because armed groups with more political power deter other groups from initiating certain types of violence.     

Fuelled Power: Oil,Financiers and Central Bank Policy in Nigeria

While the literature on business power and global finance has illuminated the ways in which financial institutions limit the policy autonomy of states in developing countries, we know much less about the circumstances under which the power of financiers is undermined. In this article, I advance explanations of these circumstances by arguing that state access to natural resource revenues reduces the power of financial institutions and enhances the capacity of the state to pursue central bank policies which violate the interests of major financiers. I employ a case study of central bank policy in Nigeria to probe this argument and find evidence that supports the claim that whenever the Nigerian government's access to resource revenues increased, the state's capacity to diverge from financiers’ preferred central bank policies and to advance its own preferences increased as well. The analysis provides the basis for broader propositions about the policy space of developing countries vis-à-vis financial institutions and the variability of structural power.     

Oil and the macroeconomy: using wavelets to analyze old issues

We use (cross) wavelet analysis to decompose the time–frequency effects of oil price changes on the macroeconomy. We argue that the relation between oil prices and industrial production is not clear-cut. There are periods and frequencies where the causality runs from one variable to the other and vice-versa, justifying some instability in the empirical evidence about the macroeconomic effects of oil price shocks. We also show that the volatility of both the inflation rate and the industrial output growth rate started to decrease in the decades of 1950 and 1960.     

对我国地方政府债务问题的思考

地方政府债务问题一直以来是我国财政体系急需解决的问题之一,虽然新《预算法》已允许经批准的省级地方政府发行债券,可以让政府债务更加透明化,但要真正解决目前规模庞大的地方政府债务问题,还需从根源上进行分析,进而采取有针对性的措施予以控制和管理。     

Improving Nigeria’s Inflation Forecast with Oil Price: The Role of Estimators

In this study, we propose a supply-side augmented Phillips curve for an oil dependent (Nigerian) economy. We argue for the role of oil price as a good proxy for the supply side of inflation given the structure of the Nigerian economy, which essentially relies on oil revenue. Thus, we compare the forecast results of the oil-based augmented Phillips curve with the traditional variant, as well as time series models such as ARIMA and ARFIMA. We also test for any probable asymmetric response of Nigeria’s inflation forecast to oil price changes. The forecast analyses are conducted for both in-sample and out-of-sample periods using alternative forecast measures. We employ the estimators of Lewellen (J Financ Econ 74:209–235, 2004) and Westerlund and Narayan (J Financ Econ 13(2):342–375, 2015) in order to account for relevant statistical properties of the predictors, and their results are compared with the standard OLS estimator. In addition, we follow the extended version of Westerlund and Narayan, constructed into a linear multi-predictive form by Makin et al. (J Int Money Financ 40:63–78, 2014) and Salisu et al. (Energy Econ, 2018), and a nonlinear (asymmetric) multi-predictive model by Salisu and Isah (Econ Model, 2018). We find that the augmented (oil-based) Phillips curve outperforms its traditional version, as well as time series models for both forecast samples. However, oil price asymmetric effects become evident when large samples are employed. Also, we find that the choice of estimator does matter for accurate inflation forecasts and by implication, accounting for the salient features of the predictors, if they exist, has implications on the forecast performance. Our results are robust to alternative oil price proxies and forecast measures.

     

Contending Geo-Logics: Energy Security,Resource Ontologies,and the Politics of Expert Knowledge in Estonia

Engaging with nascent scholarly efforts to foreground the ‘geo’ of geopolitics, this article examines how certain low-quality geological substances are constituted as strategic, ‘unconventional’ fossil fuel resources, the exploitation of which is deemed indispensable for energy security reasons. Based on a detailed study of oil shale exploitation in Estonia, the paper specifically analyses the politics of knowledge that enable such carbon-intensive and energy-inefficient industries to perpetuate at the national level and, moreover, subvert the neoliberal imperatives of energy sector deregulation and decarbonisation arising from EU policies. This analysis leads to two key arguments. At one level, the Estonian case evidences and contextualises the growing recognition that ‘energy security’ represents a multifaceted and dynamic construct as it highlights, in particular, the contingency of expert knowledge in its conceptualisation and performance. What counts as energy security is in this case articulated via shifting and contested modes of knowledge-making, whereby state- and market-led modes of energy governance are continuously renegotiated. At another level, however, the politics of knowledge is explained here as exercised through contending ontologies of the fossil fuel resource that pivots security claims, or ‘geo-logics’, which has multiplying effects on resource materiality.     

Seeds of distrust: conflict in Uganda

We study the effect of civil conflict on social capital, focusing on Uganda’s experience during the last decade. Using individual and county-level data, we document large causal effects on trust and ethnic identity of an exogenous outburst of ethnic conflicts in 2002–2005. We exploit two waves of survey data from Afrobarometer (Round 4 Afrobarometer Survey in Uganda, 2000, 2008), including information on socioeconomic characteristics at the individual level, and geo-referenced measures of fighting events from ACLED. Our identification strategy exploits variations in the both the spatial and ethnic intensity of fighting. We find that more intense fighting decreases generalized trust and increases ethnic identity. The effects are quantitatively large and robust to a number of control variables, alternative measures of violence, and different statistical techniques involving ethnic and spatial fixed effects and instrumental variables. Controlling for the intensity of violence during the conflict, we also document that post-conflict economic recovery is slower in ethnically fractionalized counties. Our findings are consistent with the existence of a self-reinforcing process between conflicts and ethnic cleavages.     

War and peace: Third-party intervention in conflict

This paper develops a simple sequential-move game to characterize the endogeneity of third-party intervention in conflict. We show how a third party's “intervention technology” interacts with the canonical “conflict technologies” of two rival parties in affecting the sub-game perfect Nash equilibrium outcome. From the perspective of deterrence strategy, we find that it is more costly for a third party to support an ally to deter a challenger from attacking (i.e., to maintain peace or acquiescence), as compared to the alternative case when the third party supports the ally to gain a disputed territory by attacking (i.e., to create war), ceteris paribus. However, an optimally intervening third party can be either “peace-making”, “peace-breaking”, or neither depending on the characteristics of the conflict and the stakes the third party holds with each of the rival parties.     

Bridging the gap between technological possibilities and people:: Involving people in the early phases of technology development

Technology provides endless promising possibilities to support people's lives. In reality, it is not a matter of what is possible, but rather a matter of how and when technology will be integrated, accepted and adopted by people. However, conventionally within organizations the areas of technology development and market research are not closely related nor applied in the process of innovation and do not always share the same scope. In that sense there is a gap between the potential of technology and humankind's preferences.This paper discusses the current areas of technology development and market research in a business environment and proposes an integrated approach to bridge the gap between technology and people, in which people, rather than market sizes become central in the development of technology. In addition, it also describes how this approach of people-driven innovation is brought into practice through the development of early experience demonstrators. The core focus of this paper is on the processes and practices regarding innovation within an organization, rather than the adoption of innovation by users or the rate of the adoption of a marketed solution (Rogers, 1995 [E.M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, The Free Press, New York, 1995. [1]]).     

Resources and conflict in the Caspian Sea

The management of resources can shape or alleviate conflict. This article examines the case of the Caspian Sea as littoral states vie for oil fields in the transboundary water body. These five states have promoted conflicting proposals for the division of Caspian resources and are staking their claims through a mix of diplomatic efforts, international agreements, commercial contracts and militarization. Geoeconomic power has not fully surpassed more traditional, military control of territory in this context which continues to be complex on several geopolitical scales.     

The control of reproduction: principle and practice in Nigeria

The author examines the law and practice concerning contraception and abortion in Nigeria in the context of the impact of these factors on women's rights and status. She concludes that both the law and current practices are designed to continue the subordination of married women to their husbands.     

Growth and conflict in the developing world: Neo-liberal narratives and social-economy alternatives

The last quarter of the 20th century saw an increase in violent conflicts across the globe. With connections between growth, poverty and conflict increasingly difficult to ignore, research has begun examining economic dimensions of conflict. This paper reviews and critiques this new research, much of it conducted by the World Bank. The research argues that war results from poverty, and poverty from misguided economic policies, so that reducing conflict requires redoubling efforts to promote growth via neo-liberal reforms. I criticize the conceptual underpinnings of this argument, including its overemphasis on individual incentives and its claim that social and economic injustices do not contribute to violent conflicts. Instead I argue that social economics provides valuable alternative perspectives on conflict that take seriously its social dimensions, especially problems of economic justice and the common good.     

Converting social conflict: Focal points and the evolution of cooperation

We examine the ability of focal points to transform situations of potential conflict into situations of cooperation. In performing this function, focal points convert “worst-case scenarios” into “better-case scenarios,” which are easier for political economic systems to handle. Focal points thus contribute to the ability of political economies to perform well in the face of less than ideal conditions, enhancing systemic robustness. JEL Code P0     

Theories of the firm: contractual and competence perspectives

The article compares alternative approaches to the theory of the firm. The two main approaches confronted are the contractual (Coasian) perspective and the competence (evolutionary) perspective. Whereas the firm as a repository of tacit knowledge is neglected in the contractual perspectives, it occupies center stage in the competence perspective. It is argued that the competence perspective is not only applicable an understanding of the sources of firms' competitive advantage, but may also be applied to the issues of the existence and the boundaries of the firm. This means that a distinct theory of the firm can be constructed on the basis of evolutionary theory.     

Education budget savings from ending child marriage and early childbirths: the case of Niger

Ending child marriage and early childbirths would reduce total fertility rates and population growth especially in countries with a high incidence of child marriage, early childbirths, or both. Savings for public budgets could be large. This article relies on demographic projections and a UNESCO costing model for the provision of education by governments to estimate savings that could result from ending child marriage and early childbirths for public education budgets. The analysis is conducted for Niger, the country with the highest rate of child marriage in the world.     

On the escalation and de-escalation of conflict

We introduce three extensions of the Hirshleifer–Skaperdas conflict game to study experimentally the effects of post-conflict behavior and repeated interaction on the allocation of effort between production and appropriation. Without repeated interaction, destruction of resources by defeated players can lead to lower appropriative efforts and higher overall efficiency. With repeated interaction, appropriative efforts are considerably reduced because some groups manage to avoid fighting altogether, often after substantial initial conflict. To attain peace, players must first engage in costly signaling by making themselves vulnerable and by forgoing the possibility to appropriate the resources of defeated opponents.     

The bargaining problem: axioms concerning changes in the conflict point

Two axioms concerning changes in the conflict point are introduced. A sufficient condition for a solution function to satisfy these axioms is that it satisfies the relatively weak adding requirement of Thomson-Myerson (1980).     

Ethnic conflict and economic disparity: Serbians and Albanians in Kosovo

Using the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) household survey from post-conflict Kosovo, we investigate the comparative economic well-being of Serbs and Albanians. An Oaxaca decomposition shows Serb households are both better endowed with income generating characteristics, such as education, and receive higher returns to these characteristics than Albanian households. Despite these advantages, Serb households have lower living standards, on average, than Albanian households. Most of the difference in living standards between Serb and Albanian households is due to unobserved non-economic factors. This result has serious implications for the political economy of policymaking in post-conflict Kosovo. Journal of Comparative Economics 34 (4) (2006) 754–773.