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This paper revisits the resource curse hypothesis by examining the nexus between crude oil price and economic growth for a panel of 32 Sub-Saharan Africa countries from 1980 to 2017. Employing the panel vector autoregression (VAR) estimation technique, we found evidence of a significant positive effect of crude oil price on economic growth both in the short run and long run. However, after splitting the panel into net oil exporters and importers, the results for net oil importers remain consistent with those obtained for the whole panel, unlike those for net oil exporters revealing a positive and negative effect of crude oil price on economic growth in the short-run and long-run periods, respectively. This confirms the resource curse hypothesis for oil-exporting countries under consideration. Moreover, we found evidence of bidirectional causality between crude oil price and real GDP. Consequently, to boost economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, various governments should encourage economic diversification, increase investments in human capital in view of enhancing the development of the oil sector by ensuring an efficient management of oil revenues, as well as intensifying the fight against corruption. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s43546-021-00179-x.

Sovereign Wealth Funds sind eine heterogene Gruppe von Fonds, die grundsätzlich durch Staaten gegründet werden und in staatlichem Auftrag ihr Kapital anlegen. Das Fondsvermögen wird meist aus Erlösen von Rohstoffexporten oder Budgetüberschüssen gespeist. Es wird zur Stabilisierung in wirtschaftlich schwierigen Zeiten, zur intergenerationalen Umverteilung oder für den Strukturwandel eingesetzt. Hierbei spielten bislang „grüne Investitionen“ eine geringe Rolle. Dies lag u. a. daran, dass aufgrund der moderaten Ölpreisentwicklung in den letzten Jahren die Einnahmen aus Ölexporten und damit das Fondsvolumen von SWF weniger dynamisch zunahmen als vor der globalen Finanzkrise. Zudem haben „ressourcenreiche“ Länder mit SWF bislang wenige Anreize in klimafreundliche Politiken zu investieren. Mit der Agenda 2030 für nachhaltige Entwicklung gibt es nun erste Initiativen von SWF, sich stärker für nachhaltige Entwicklung zu engagieren. Noch handelt es sich um vereinzelte, wenig koordinierte Projekte. Vor dem Hintergrund internationaler Klimaabkommen könnten SWF eine Brückenfunktion übernehmen, indem das während der Rohstoffgewinnung und -ausfuhr akkumulierte Fondsvermögen zur Dekarbonisierung und zur Diversifizierung der Wirtschaftsstruktur beiträgt. In den Verhandlungen zu den Klimazielen zeichnet sich indes ab, dass die Akteure sich nur in einem mühsamen Verständigungsprozess auf ausgereifte Finanzierungsstrategien für den Klimaschutz einigen werden. Sovereign Wealth Funds are a heterogeneous group of funds. In principle, they are established by national governments and invest their capital on behalf of state authorities. Fund assets are generated by revenues of commodity exports or budget surpluses. It is used for stabilization purposes in difficult economic times, for intergenerational redistribution and structural change. Thereby green investments have played a minor role, so far. Among others, the reason was that due to moderate oil price development in recent years oil export revenues increase less dynamic as it was the case before the global financial crisis. In addition, “resource rich” countries with SWF have few incentives to invest in climate-friendly policies. In the course of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development SWF have taken first initiatives to get more involved into sustainable development. So far these are only few and poorly coordinated projects. In light of international climate agreements SWF could act as bridge builders by using funds assets accumulated during the phase of commodity exports for de-carbonization and diversification of the economy. However, negotiations on climate targets reveal that the involved actors will agree on a mature financing strategy only in a tough process of understanding.

Developing countries that experience commodity booms struggle to mobilize sustainable tax revenues. Emerging literature on the subject notwithstanding, there is limited exploration of the specific types of institutions critical for improving fiscal capacity in resourcerich contexts. This paper investigates which types of institutions moderate the adverse effect of natural resource rents on non-resource tax effort. I propose a simple theoretical model and complement its insights with an empirical examination of the mediating role of 12 different measures of institutional quality commonly used in the literature. I find evidence of a mitigating role for 'constraints on executive power' and 'democracy'. Other covariates found to be important are national income per capita, the size of the agricultural sector, and control of corruption. The results suggest that effort to bolster sustainable tax effort in resource-rich contexts must focus not only on building effective political institutions but also on addressing structural constraints.

We use a welfare-based intertemporal stochastic optimization model and historical data to estimate the size of the optimal intergenerational and liquidity funds and the corresponding resource dividend available to the government of the Canadian province Alberta. To first-order of approximation, this dividend should be a constant fraction of total above- and below-ground wealth, complemented by additional precautionary savings at initial times to build up a small liquidity fund to cope with oil price volatility. The ongoing dividend equals approximately 30 per cent of government revenue and requires building assets of approximately 40 per cent of GDP in 2030, 100 per cent of GDP in 2050 and 165 per cent in 2100. Finally, the effect of the recent plunge in oil prices on our estimates is examined. Our recommendations are in stark contrast with historical and current government policy.

Organizations are restructuring, re-engineering and rethinking how they do business in an effort to keep pace with changes in technology and other economic conditions in the world. The goal of technological change under study is the ability of SMEs to accept new innovative methods that will lead to higher performance of humans and machines for increased productivity. Descriptive survey research with the sample population of 153 respondents made up of managers and owners of small and medium enterprises within the Lagos metropolis was used for this study. The major statistical technique used was a linear regression technique. The hypothesis tested found that technological change has effect on organizational performance of small and medium enterprise within the Lagos metropolis. The coefficient of determination (R2 = 0.566) showed that 56.6% of the success recorded in the SMEs performance is accounted for by technological change. This result is statistically significant because the p-value of the result (0.000) is less than 0.05 level of significance used for the study. This indicates that technological change has a positive and significant impact on SMEs performance in Lagos State. In order to achieve success in change management through technology; human resources, culture and innovation must be recognized and respected. This will enhance SMEs performance both in the short and long run. It will also prevent unnecessary resistance of employees to change through deviant workplace behaviour.

The fuel and energy economy is an area of business that encompasses the whole spectrum of phenomena and processes related to the acquisition and use of energy carriers, both in the processing of certain energy carriers for others and in the processes of final consumption of fuels and energy. The article studied the potential of waste to produce green energy, in order to search for alternatives to energy from conventional energy sources. Efforts have been made to evaluate the activities of waste incineration plants, both economically and environmentally. The work is theoretical. Methods used to try to answer a research question are characterized by a heuristic approach. Gospodarka paliwowo‑energetyczna to dziedzina działalności, która obejmuje całe spektrum zjawisk i procesów związanych z pozyskiwaniem i użytkowaniem nośników energii, zarówno w zakresie przetwarzania niektórych nośników energii, jak i procesów końcowego zużycia paliw i energii. W artykule badano potencjał odpadów w celu poszukiwania alternatywy dla energii pochodzącej z konwencjonalnych źródeł. Podjęto się oceny działań spalarni odpadów pod względem ekonomicznym i środowiskowym. Praca ma charakter teoretyczny. Metody wykorzystane do próby odpowiedzi na pytanie badawcze charakteryzują się podejściem heurystycznym.

The aim of this study is to determine the effects of discovering oil on the performance of a small open economy, in this case the Falkland Islands. Using an event study approach and the return on one of the Falkland Islands&rsquo, main companies, the results suggest that the discovery of oil has mostly had a positive effect on this company, which serves as a proxy for the Falkland Islands economy. In addition, using an EGARCH approach, there is evidence that the discovery of oil has reduced the volatility or risk of the company and therefore potentially the economy as a whole. However, when the oil price is added to the model, this tends to dominate the effect of the discovery.

Im Dezember 2011 startete eine Kampagne des Bundeswirtschaftsministeriums unter dem Motto »Kraftwerke? Ja bitte!«. Um im Zuge der Energiewende und des Atomausstiegs weiterhin Versorgungssicherheit und bezahlbaren Strom zu gewährleisten, seien neue Kohle- und Gaskraftwerke unabdinglich. In dieser »Kurz-zum-Klima«-Ausgabe wird ein Überblick über die Situation der Kohleenergie in Deutschland gegeben und deren Rolle in der Energiewende genauer betrachtet. Es zeigt sich, dass die Kohle auf absehbare Zeit eine nicht zu unterschätzende Rolle in der Stromerzeugung in Deutschland einnehmen wird, was mit dementsprechend hohen CO2-Emissionen verbunden ist und so die Klimaziele Deutschlands in Gefahr bringt. Neben der Erreichung der Klimaziele wird auch das Ziel, im Jahr 2050 80% des Strommixes aus Erneuerbaren zu gewinnen, gefährdet. Bisher wurde von Seiten der Politik jedoch noch nichts unternommen, um Investitionen in flexible Reservekapazitäten zu fördern. Nach aktuellem Wissens- und Technologiestand kommen für solch flexible Kapazitäten nur Gaskraftwerke in Frage, die allerdings unter aktuellen Bedingungen nicht rentabel sind. Investitionsanreize in solche Kraftwerke sind daher dringend notwendig.

The effects of stochastic future oil prices on optimal oil extraction paths and optimal tax, spending and government debt policies are analyzed when demand for oil is linear and preferences quadratic. Without prudence, optimal oil extraction is governed by the Hotelling rule and optimal budgetary policies by the tax smoothing principle. With prudence, the government depletes oil reserves more aggressively and engages in precautionary saving financed by postponing spending and bringing taxes forward, especially if it has substantial monopoly power on the oil market, gives high priority to the public spending target and is very prudent, and future oil demand has high variance. If the oil market is fairly competitive, prudent governments deliberately under-estimate oil reserves and under-predict future oil prices. This leads to less aggressive oil depletion and less government saving. However, if the government attaches high priority to raising public spending to its bliss level, prudence implies a tendency to over-predict future oil prices and reserves which induces more aggressive oil depletion and more government saving. Uncertain economic prospects induce precautionary saving and more aggressive oil extraction.

The new estimates of the Maddison Project show that GDP per capita ratio at purchasing power parity (ppp) between Bolivia and Finland has changed from 0.68 ca. 1850 to 0.16 in 2015; similarly, that between Chile and Norway from 0.65 to 0.28. The aim of this article is to present a review of the literature and available quantitative evidence to understand how these extreme differences became possible between countries with similarly enormous natural resource endowments. Specifically, the article seeks to: (a) identify some stylized facts that may help understand the divergence between Andean and Nordic countries; (b) identify key historical processes that explain the divergent effect of natural resource abundance in Andean and Nordic economies. In order to achieve these objectives, four topics are covered: GDPpc, population, trade and taxation. The analysis comprises three Nordic countries (Finland, Norway and Sweden) and three Andean countries (Bolivia, Chile and Peru) from the mid-Nineteenth Century to present day. The sample size, time span covered and thematic approach provide new evidence regarding previous work.

This paper analyzes the strategic firm behavior within the context of a two-period resource duopoly model in which firms face endogenous intertemporal capacity constraints. Firms are allowed to invest in capacity in between two periods in order to increase their initial endowment of exhaustible resource stocks. Using this setup, we find that the equilibrium price weakly decreases over time. Moreover, asymmetric distribution of initial resource stocks leads to a significant change in equilibrium outcome, provided that firms do not have the same cost structure in capacity additions. It is also verified that if only one company is capable of investment in capacity, the market moves to a more concentrated structure in the second period.

We consider an alternative method to the classical one for the determination of Markov perfect Nash equilibria. The approach shown in the paper is based on the study of a quasi-linear system of partial differential equations instead of the Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman system. The simpler structure of the former allows us to determine existence and uniqueness of Nash equilibria in non-renewable resource games under some assumptions. When closed-form solutions are not available, we give a method to obtain numerical solutions. Financial support from Investigation Projects PB98-0393 of Direcci-on General de Ense˜nanza Superior e Investigaci-on Cient-XKca and VA 108/01 of Junta de Castilla y Le-on are gratefully acknowledged. The author is grateful to two anonymous referees for their comments and corrections. I am also indebted to the Associated Editor Tamer BaHsar for his remarks and for the careful reading of the manuscript. The author is responsible for any remaining error. Publicado

Die Rohstoffpreise klettern auf immer neue Höhen, aber dennoch hört man aus den rohstoffexportierenden Ländern – vor allem Afrikas – wenig von wirtschaftlicher Prosperität. Im Gegenteil: Es herrschen extreme Armut, hohe Arbeitslosigkeit, Gewalt, Korruption und Misswirtschaft. Der Beitrag geht der Frage nach, inwieweit negative Effekte von Ressourcenreichtum ausgehen.

WWWforEurope Working Paper No. 55, 65 pages This paper takes a historical perspective in analysing past systemic social-ecological transition processes. The research paper explores two major energy transitions of the past: the transition to the use of fossil fuels (e.g. starting with coal in the UK in the 17th century, and continuing in the rest of the world with coal and oil since). How was this transition linked to major institutional transformations, frequently paved by revolutions? We statistically demonstrate how similar processes occurred in many countries, and accellerated over time. In contrast to more common approaches, we do not focus on the introduction of particular technologies, but on the gradual substitution of biomass as the key source of energy by fossil fuels, and also on the increase in the amount of economically available energy. Beyond the common indicator TPES (total primary energy supply) we use and expand our historical database that countains the indicator DEC (domestic energy consumption). DEC encompasses, beyond TPES, also the energy converted by human and animal nutritional intake. We analyse the role of revolutions for the respective energy transition statistically and are able to identify statistical breaks in population growth, energy consumption and economic growth linked to the occurrence of revolutions. We compare trajectories of European and Non-European countries, and we compare countries in which the transition to the use of fossil fuels was marked by revolutionary processes with countries where this was not the case. Particular attention is paid to the phase of the transition in which revolutions have occurred, and the impact this shock had on the further course of the energy transition and on economic growth. The second marked transition analyzed occurred in the mature industrial economies in the early 1970s, in association with the first and second oil price shocks. In practically all mature industrial countries, there was triggered a termination of the steep incline of metabolic rates in favour of a fairly stable per capita level of energy and materials consumption, while economic growth continued. We investigate the policy responses in key policy areas coping with these "shocks" and achieving a reduction of biophysical growth while maintaining growth in the economy and employment. We employ a number of different methods for this analysis: we investigate long time series data statistically to explore at what time and in what sequence certain trends changed. On the other hand, we explore policy analysis literature for a number of countries qualitatively. Finally, we synthesize what can be learned from such macro societal transitions: what role do external shocks, structural change and energy policies play? Which lessons are to be learnt from past transitions in order to be in a better position to manage the transition ahead of us?

The paper analyzes resource policies in an economy in which renewable and fossil resources are realistically assumed to be essential inputs to production. Also realistically, the two types of resources are imperfect substitutes whose degree of substitutability can, however, increase over time. The focus of the - analytical as well as numerical - analysis is on the impact of this rising substitutability on the extraction of the exhaustible resource. This is especially interesting in a setting in which the use of the fossil resource induces a market failure, e.g., in the form of an environmental externality (of which climate change is the most prominent example), and in which policies are introduced to internalize this market failure. It is shown that policies which aim to slow down resource extraction but whose design is determined from political rather than optimality considerations are likely to result in even faster resource extraction. We show that this effect - often labeled a Green Paradox - can be accompanied by extraction-increasing effects of rising substitutability. More specifically, we find two types of flexibility effects that have opposing effects on the extraction path. The first effect speeds up extraction due to the expectation of higher flexibility in the future. This effect arises independently of whether the increase in substitutability is due to exogenous technological change or is endogenously driven. The second effect slows down extraction and arises when substitutability increases endogenously in accord with a changing input mix. Our results have several important implications for the design of policy measures. Specifically, a policy measure that induces flexibility-increasing technological progress must take into consideration the supply-side effects that result from the anticipation of increasing flexibility. The model also shows that for a policy to be effective, not only must flexibility effects be taken into account but the specific type of flexibility effect is also important.

The challenges of sustainable development are well known: the full enjoyment of the earth's resources without compromising the welfare of future generations. It is to reconcile the three pillars on which the concept is based, namely: economic, social and environmental. Beyond that called sustainable development, the United Nations, in collaboration with other international organizations over the last ten years developing a new concept: the concept of green economy which is defined as "an economy that leads to improvement of human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and the lack of resources". In this paper, we support the idea that economic development policies should include the issue of the green economy represents a real opportunity for development and containment of poverty in the world in general and in Africa in particular.

This study empirically examines the independent effects of stock market and banking sector development on economic growth in Nigeria over the period 1981–2014 using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to co-integration analysis. Controlling for the possible effects of crude oil price and trade openness on economic activities in Nigeria, this study found both stock market and banking sector development insignificant in influencing economic growth in Nigeria. In general, the results highlight the weakness of the Nigerian financial sector in stimulating economic growth through resource mobilisation and allocation and the dominant role of the oil sector in economic activities in Nigeria.

This paper proposes an endogenous growth model with an essential non-renewable resource, where economic growth enables firms to invest in innovation in the extraction technology and to allocate more capital to resource extraction. Innovation in the extraction technology offsets the deterioration of ore qualities and keeps the production costs of the non-renewable resource constant. Aggregate output as well as production and use of the non-renewable resource increase exponentially. Our model explains the long-run trends of non-renewable resource prices and world production over more than 200 years. If historical trends in technological progress and in the deterioration of ore qualities continue, it is in the realm of possibility that non-renewable resources are de facto inexhaustible. Our results suggest that the industrialization in China and other emerging economies contributes to keeping non-renewable resource prices constant in the long run.

For a country fractionalized in competing factions, each owning part of the stock of natural exhaustible resources, or with insecure property rights, we analyze how resources are transformed into productive capital to sustain consumption. We allow property rights to improve as the country transforms natural resources into capital. The ensuing power struggle about the control of resources is solved as a non-cooperative differential game. Prices of resources and depletion increase faster than suggested by the Hotelling rule, especially with many competing factions and less secure property rights. As a result, the country substitutes away from resources to capital too rapidly and invests more than predicted by the Hartwick rule. The power struggle boosts output but depresses aggregate consumption and welfare, especially in highly fractionalized countries with less secure property rights. The theory suggests that adjusted net saving estimates calculated by the World Bank using market prices over-estimate welfare-based measures of genuine saving.

This paper examines the impact of oil on economic growth in transition economies of the former Soviet Union (FSU) and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). We use oil production and reserves data in a series of panel estimations to show that oil has had strong and robust positive growth effects between 1990-2006. This is confirmed when we consider the different oil ownership structures. Additionally, we find that privatization levels have had positive growth effects, while privatization speed has had negative effects on growth., Economic Working Paper Series, 09/108

The empirical finding of an inverse U-shaped relationship between per capita income and pollution, the so-called Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), suggests that as countries experience economic growth, environmental deterioration decelerates and thus becomes less of an issue. Focusing on the prime example of carbon emissions, the present article provides a critical review of the new econometric techniques that have questioned the baseline polynomial specification in the EKC literature. We discuss issues related to the functional form, heterogeneity, “spurious” regressions and spatial dependence to address whether and to what extent the EKC can be observed. Despite these new approaches, there is still no clear-cut evidence supporting the existence of the EKC for carbon emissions. JEL classifications: C20; Q32; Q50; O13 Keywords: Environmental Kuznets Curve; Carbon emissions; Functional form; Heterogeneity; “Spurious” regressions; Spatial dependence.Residential satisfaction is often used as a barometer to assess the performance of public policy and programmes designed to raise individuals' well-being. However, the fact that responses elicited from residents might be biased by subjective, non-observable factors casts doubt on whether these responses can be taken as trustable indicators of the individuals' housing situation. Emotional factors such as aspirations or expectations might affect individuals' cognitions of their true residential situation. To disentangle this puzzle, we investigated whether identical residential attributes can be perceived differently depending on tenure status. Our results indicate that tenure status is crucial not only in determining the level of housing satisfaction, but also regarding how dwellers perceive their housing characteristics. Keywords: Housing satisfaction, subjective well-being, homeownership. JEL classification: D1, R2.

We present a Stackelberg model of conflict, in which contestants have limited endowments to be put in two separate sectors, thus incorporating salient features of many conflicts. The model is applied to the case of conflict over natural resources. Consistent with amounting empirical evidence regarding a so-called "resource curse", we find that the relation between conflict intensity and resource rents is non-monotonous, and that the economy's income growth rate may be negatively affected by resource abundance.

The aim of this paper is to analyze how active R&D policies affect the growth rate of an economy with endogenous growth and non-renewable resources. We know from Scholz and Ziemens (1999) and Groth (2006) that in infinitely lived agents (ILA) economies, any active R&D policy increases the growth rate of the economy. To see if this result also appears in economies with finite lifetime agents, we developed an endogenous growth overlapping generations (OLG) economy à la Diamond which uses non-renewable resources as essential inputs in final good’s production. We show analytically that any R&D policy that reduces the use of natural resources implies a raise in the growth rate of the economy. Numerically we show that in economies with low intertemporal elasticity of substitution (IES), active R&D policies lead the economy to increase the depletion of non-renewable resources. Nevertheless, we find that active R&D policies always imply increases in the endogenous growth rate, in both scenarios. Furthermore, when the IES coefficient is lower (greater) than one, active R&D policies affect the growth rate of the economy in the ILA more (less) than in OLG economies. Financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, through Projects SEJ2006-12793/ECON, SEJ2007-62081/ECON and SEJ2006-10827/ECON, and Universidad del País Vasco through Grupo de Investigación Consolidado UPV GIU06/41.

The paper constructs environmental efficiency indexes for a sample consisting of high- and low-income countries using nonparametric production frontier techniques and then establishes an environmental Kuznets relationship for environmental efficiency by Nadaraya-Watson kernel estimation methodology. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved. JEL classification: Q25; Q32.