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Non-renewable energy resources are considered to be an important input for industries that support local industrial production and employment. However, many researchers believe that such resources have a damaging effect on the institutional quality, because this quality has an effect on a country’s decision-making mechanisms, and on the human capital, which is usually described as the accumulation of education in a specified population. This collective damage thus impedes economic growth and development. The present study analyses the impact of resource rents from non-renewable energy resources and the human capital on the institutional quality in Kuwait, using an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach based on data for the period between 1984 to 2018. The results indicate that an increase in rents from non-renewable energy resources has decreased institutional quality, whereas human capital enhances the institutional quality both in the short and long-term. This study concludes that an investment in the human capital could help insulate Kuwait from the damaging effects of over-reliance on the non-renewable energy resource rents.Keywords: Non-renewable Energy Resources; Resource Rents; Institutional Quality; Human Capital; Kuwait; Resource CurseJEL Classifications: F62; O11; O38; O40DOI: https://doi.org/10.32479/ijeep.11370

A climate-positive COVID-19 recovery can accelerate the energy transition away from fossil fuels. Yet, current assessments of recovery stimulus programs suggest that the most fossil fuel producers ...

The resource curse literature shows that natural resources, particularly oil, help regime or leadership survival, but it also suggests that resource-rich countries are prone to civil wars or political instability. This article argues that the ownership structure of the oil sector matters and influences leadership survival. Specifically, foreign ownership of the oil sector raises leaders’ survival prospect and leads to more military interventions aimed to help the leader. Using data on oil ownership and leaders from 1962 to 2006 across 120 developing countries, this article finds that foreign involvement in the oil sector has a negative effect on leadership turnover. Countries with deeper foreign involvement in the oil sector are also more likely to experience military interventions on the side of the leaders. In other words, leaders of oil-producing countries do receive political support when they cooperate with and serve as ‘petro-friends’ to foreign powers.

Purpose This study aims to explore the institutional complexities associated with the design and implementation of a natural resource fund for innovation. Design/methodology/approach This study examines the case of Chile's Innovation Fund for Competitiveness by means of a historical approach building on interviews with key informants. Findings The proper functioning of a natural resource fund for innovation requires efficient institutional and operational structures, as well as strong coordination with innovation system actors. In particular, the case of Chile highlights the challenges inherent in adopting a regional approach when implementing this type of strategy, due to the institutional voids that hamper the role of regional governments in emerging countries. Originality/value Natural resource funds for innovation constitute a strategic mechanism for developing the innovative capabilities necessary to enhance the competitiveness of resource-rich emerging countries. This is one of the first studies addressing the institutional challenges involved in setting up this kind of fund in practice, focusing on one of the most relevant and longstanding examples from Latin America.

The emergence of the crime of oil theft and illegal refineries is not sudden but the realization of its negative economic impact on the national economy and the business of multinational oil companies have taken the State and the companies by storm shortly after the Presidential proclamation of amnesty in 2009 was configured to fob-off militancy in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. This paper attempts to address the resource curse of oil theft and illegal refineries in the region from a legal theoretical framework running through the various socio-legal theories through which the crime can be viewed and explained. It panders to the critical theoretical school which attributes the causes mainly to State and multinational oil company failures in infrastructural development and social responsibility commitments to the indigenous minority ethnic communities of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria rather than the orthodox school which blames the militants for ‘greed not grievance’ instincts. It employs the analytical, historical and doctrinal methods in presenting and analyzing its research data and in drawing its conclusions. The paper finds that two major and mutually repugnant tendencies in the explanation of the crime crop up from the research records. The one pursued by State actors which is anti-recognition and vehemently opposed to oil theft and local refineries and which calls for their bombardments and annihilation through the instrumentality of military strike force, JTF, and the other which is purveyed by non-State actors which is pro-oil theft that believes that the best approach ought to be condonation, legal regulation and mainstreaming of the phenomenon as part of an indigenous building block of development. This latter perspective discountenances the employment of brute force in the confrontation of the phenomenon and is thus recommended in this paper.

Studies have shown that the paradox of “the more resource-rich the poorer” otherwise known as “resource curse” has been prevalent in many countries endowed with natural resources. To mitigate this trend, a revenue management strategy called Natural Resource Funds (NRFs) - a government owned special-purpose vehicle to ensure effective management of the country’s natural wealth was embraced in some nations. This paper critically reviewed the roles of NRFs in breaking the resource curse. The Systematic Quantitative Assessment Technique (SQAT) was adopted in identifying and reviewing sixty-seven (67) peer reviewed journal articles that had researched on NRFs in the last decade. The findings were that NRFs have played an effective role in some advanced countries (Chile and China), while they have failed, especially in Africa, Middle East and Latin America due to poor institutional framework and governance. A globally set code of resource governance was recommended to strengthen the role of NRFs and enhance their effectiveness. Resource revenue maximization other than revenue utilization would be a good area for future research.

In this paper we examine the impact of natural resource wealth by focusing on historical coal-mining across European regions. As an exogenous source of variation in coal extraction activities, we rely on the presence of coal-deposits located on the earth’s surface, which historically facilitated the discovery and extraction of coal. Our results show that former coal-mining regions are substantially poorer, with (at least) 10% smaller per-capita GDP than comparable regions in the same country that did not mine coal. We provide evidence that much of this lag is explained by lower levels of human capital accumulation and that this human-capital effect is concentrated in men. Finally, we provide suggestive evidence that the persistently lower levels of human capital in coal mining regions that we document result from the crystallization of negative attitudes towards education and lower future orientations in these regions.

Corruption is considered an important driver of the resource curse in developing countries. Based on a large-scale field experiment in Tanzania, this paper studies how the salience of future natural resource revenues shapes beliefs, attitudes, and behavior. We find some evidence that information about the discovery of natural gas causes people to expect more corruption in the future, but no evidence of the information making people at present more willing to engage in corruption and dishonest behavior or less trusting. The findings do not support the idea of self-fulfilling expectations about future corruption. The paper provides a rich set of results on the determinants of corruption and trust in a development context, which may contribute to a better understanding of the micro-foundations of the resource curse.

Government behavior can be affected by natural resource benefits. Benevolent government and political leaders may use them to improve the welfare of the people, whereas others may use them for their own interests. To examine the effects of oil bonanza on government behavior comprehensively, this study investigates how giant oilfield discoveries affect the size and composition of government expenditure using data from 168 countries between 1972 and 2008. We find weak evidence that giant oilfield discoveries increase total government expenditure significantly in the medium and long term, whereas their effects are more evident in the short term, especially when controlling for other factors affecting total government expenditure. We also obtain evidence that democracy plays a mediating role in these effects; if the democracy level in a country is consolidated, the size of total government spending does not increase even when discovering giant oilfields. Considering each category of government expenditure, giant oilfield discoveries increase expenditure on health and social protection significantly, whereas they decrease educational expenditure. Furthermore, giant oilfield discoveries decrease expenditure on economic affairs and defense and increase general public services and public order and safety. Finally, giant oilfield discoveries increase the net implicit gasoline subsidy in the long term. These findings enhance our understanding of the effects of oil bonanza on government behavior.

In efforts to explain the resource curse, researchers have examined the connection between the resource curse and national corruption. Because being relatively rich in natural resources may encoura...

The article provides a comparative analysis of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan to find out how the country's wealth in natural resources affects the features of its innovative development. The study confirmed the inverse relationship between the level of a country's resource endowment and the rate of its innovative development: the richer a country is in natural resources, the lower the level of innovation development in it. This trend, which is called the "resource curse", has manifested itself to the greatest extent in Kazakhstan through a significant dependence on oil exports, as well as in Ukraine due to dependence on the export of grain crops. The main factors affecting the characteristics of the country's economic development in such conditions are the level of human capital, which manifests itself through formal education, formed skills, as well as the perfection of the institutional environment, which should create incentives for the development of high-tech manufacturing industries. Overcoming the negative effects of the “resource curse” requires the will and systemic organizational efforts of the state to redirect resource rent to the development of modern industries, as well as assistance in their entry into foreign markets. But the problem here is the lack of interest of the state in improving the institutional environment in the presence of high natural resource rent, that is, there is a relationship between the availability of resource rent and imperfect institutions. The development of the ICT sector can be considered a positive trend in Ukraine, which could potentially prevent a sharp decline in the level of human capital development.

This study investigated “Entrepreneurship and Economic Diversification in Nigeria: The Moderating influence of Enabling Environment on Global Satellite Mobile Village’s Experience.” The purpose was to find out the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic diversification with focus on the moderating influence of enabling environment. A cross-sectional survey design and convenience sampling technique were adopted. Pilot survey and confirmatory factor analysis were carried out to validate the research instrument. The reliability test of the instrument yielded a value of 0.67 which more than met Bagozzi and Yi’s benchmark of α ≥ 0.50 and as such, was accepted as adequate and used. Primary data were obtained from 127 copies of questionnaire issued out of which 120 copies representing 94% return rate were retrieved and used in the study. Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient was used to analyse the data aided by Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25.0. The findings showed that there was no significant relationship between entrepreneurship and economic diversification. However, the enabling environment had significant moderating influence on the relationships between entrepreneurship and economic diversification. These findings informed the conclusion that enabling environment moderates the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic diversification. It is recommended that further empirical study be carried out in other segments of the economy with more factors to corroborate or diverge from these outcomes. Moreover, government should create cultural awareness, deploy resources to diversify the economy via entrepreneurship and free itself from the Dutch disease of resource curse theory.

While most of the literature on natural resources highlights their effect on the growth rate and level of income, this paper shifts the focus toward the distribution of income. Using newly developed dynamic panel co-integration techniques to account for the cross-country heterogeneity, cross-section dependence, and feedback effects in the oil-volatility-inequality nexus, it finds that oil abundance increases human capital investment, improves institutional quality, and hence mitigates income inequality. However, oil volatility has the opposite effects. It accords with the recent trend in the resource curse literature that it is the volatility, rather than the level, of oil that causes the paradox of plenty. The results also shed light on the factors that shape a country's response to its oil richness and volatility and offer policy implications for mitigating detriments associated with oil volatility.

The relationship between foreign direct investments (FDI) and natural resource endowment of a country is contentious. This study attempts to study this relationship for Saudi Arabia that is primarily an oil-producing country. In the process, it would also assess the role of institutions, trade openness, and domestic investments in attracting FDI. Using the methodology of cointegration over the data for the period 1984-2016, the study ascertains the presence of ‘resource curse’ in terms of attracting FDI. The study discovers new findings as to the resource curse in attracting FDI are not because of institutional quality which has a positive relationship with FDI. The results also indicate the absence of crowding out of domestic investments. Finally, the study recommends channeling FDI to Greenfield projects with the maximum transfer of management and technology.Keywords: Natural Resource, Institutions, Trade openness, Crowding-out, CointegrationJEL Classifications: E02; F21; O43; P33DOI: https://doi.org/10.32479/ijeep.10359

Many countries badly mismanage their natural resource endowments. We argue that a fundamental change in paradigm is needed. Specifically, we advocate treating non-renewable natural resources as a finite shared inheritance asset, and extraction as the sale of the inherited wealth. We identify several proposals that logically derive from treating mineral sale proceeds as intergenerational wealth rather than as revenues that can be spent. Wealth portfolio management suggests that mineral owners must strive for zero-loss when selling minerals, establish a passively invested future generations fund from the proceeds and distribute dividends from that fund to citizens as the rightful owners of the shared inheritance. The current dominant metaphor of proceeds from the exploitation of non-renewable mineral resources as being “windfall revenues” is underpinned by government accounting standards. The “windfall revenue” metaphor is not only inaccurate but also produces several pernicious effects that help explain the poor management of natural resource endowments in so many countries. We do not anticipate that our ideas will quickly overturn centuries of established practice. We do, however, believe that the case needs to be made.

Innovation capacity has become a crucial factor determining the future competitiveness of resource-based cities (RBCs). To realise sustainable development, RBCs need to adopt innovation and a system to initiate the related institutional factors. Traditional methods for evaluating innovation efficiency fail to consider the internal operation processes of the innovation system. In this study, a regional innovation system was deconstructed into two inter-relational chained substages of innovation. This study focuses on a typical resource-based city, Qitaihe, in the Old Northeast Industrial Bases of China. It establishes a non-radial SBM-based superefficiency model to examine technological innovation—of the city's overall efficiency and that of every substage—to better determine the root causes of internal inefficiencies amidst innovation production. The results of this study suggest the following: (1) resources exert an obvious crowding-out effect on innovation, and the technological research and development (RD and (2) to break the ‘resource curse’, RBCs should focus their measures on boosting the efficiency of R&D personnel. This study offers another perspective on China's experience that might be beneficial for other countries.

This article argues that weak local governments increase levels of taxation by “borrowing” institutional capacity from certain types of businesses. While many businesses lobby against taxation, businesses that are locally owned, nationally connected, and logistically complex build robust associations that support taxation. These types of businesses benefit from improvements in public infrastructure, so they empower their associations to monitor members’ tax compliance and to pressure officials to uphold their spending commitments. The article demonstrates the necessity of business support for taxation in the absence of state capacity by comparing two Philippine cities that differ in their ability to tax despite a number of similarities between them. The case studies show that tax increases co-varied with business support, and that business support waxed and waned depending on over-time variation in the capability of business associations to discourage tax evasion and to enforce official commitments to spend on infrastructure.

The socio-economic impacts of past mining were studied at Singkep Island, Indonesia. Tin mining was the only major industry on the island from 1812 to 1992. It contributed around 65% -90% of the local economy, provided 2452 out of 8716 direct jobs, operated 2 out of 39 primary schools, built infrastructure and controlled the hospital, airport, power plant and piped water. After closure, substantial mining benefits turned very quickly into long-term losses. Job opportunities became unemployment, economic contributions became economic collapse, and infrastructure assets became liabilities. Environmental degradation was a negative impact during and after mining. Education was relatively unaffected because most children attended state schools. Poor resource governance during active mining led the island to heavy economic dependence, little economic diversification, and failed to transform the finite natural resources to human capital. These findings challenge the claim that Indonesia has successfully released itself from the resource curse that prevailed in the 1970s-1990s. Most previous research on Indonesia carried out analyses at national scale, while the case of Singkep emphasises the importance of regional studies.

This paper examines economic impacts of coal mining across local government areas (LGAs) in Australia. Three main distinguishing features of this research are a) the analysis through the mining boom and bust cycle, b) a focus on small regional areas within one state in Australia and c) the use of socio‐economic indicators in addition to the standard income and employment indicators. An analysis of socio‐economic changes in the LGAs during the business cycle provides insights as to how coal mining affects sustainable development of regions in the long run. Focus on one state reduces endogeneity in statistical analyses. The use of various socio‐economic indicators helps understanding of the reported negative impacts of mining on local economies. The results show that the coal mining sector creates a spillover effect resulting in an increase in non‐mining employment. The income indicators suggest that the coal mining sector creates positive impacts as indicated by the decreased share of low‐income families in the area. However, some potential risks to housing are found since an increase in coal mining employment leads to increased financial stress due to increased rental costs for low‐income households.

Is it possible to reverse the resource curse through institutional reform? Evidence suggests that there is a negative relationship between abundance of natural resources and economic growth, political stability, democracy, and peace. However, evidence illustrating how institutional reform can reverse this situation is scarce. In this paper, we exploit a component of an institutional reform that modified the allocation rule of oil royalties in Colombia and evaluate a set of effects of this reform on the living standards of Colombian households. Using international variations in the price of oil for identification, we find that the reform had important effects on several household welfare indicators. We find positive impacts on important dimensions, such as reductions in multidimensional poverty and improvements on income, employment, housing conditions, health, and education, among others. Results are mixed or null in other outcomes, such as formality or employment in the service sector. Importantly, we find no effects on monetary poverty but larger income effects for rich and urban households. We test for the different channels boosting these effects and provide tentative evidence that supports the role of fiscal and administrative capacity mechanisms.

This paper discusses the role of private sector development in overcoming the challenges of the resource curse. It identifies the developmental factors in the private sector in natural resource dep...

With much fanfare, Ghana's Jubilee Oil Field was discovered in 2007 and began producing oil in 2010. In the six coastal districts nearest the offshore fields, expectations of oil-backed development have been raised. However, there is growing concern over what locals perceive to be negative impacts of oil and gas production. Based on field research conducted in 2010 and 2015 in the same communities in each district, this paper presents a longitudinal study of the impacts (real and perceived) of oil and gas production in Ghana. With few identifiable benefits beyond corporate social responsibility projects often disconnected from local development priorities, communities are growing angrier at their loss of livelihoods, increased social ills and dispossession from land and ocean. Assuming that others must be benefiting from the petroleum resources being extracted near their communities, there is growing frustration. High expectations, real and perceived grievances, and increasing social fragmentation threaten to lead to conflict and underdevelopment.

Azerbaijan is a case study of the issue of nations with non-renewable natural resource-based economies, usually fossil fuels, facing depletion of what was deemed to be their principal resource. Azerbaijan’s petroleum wealth has been a defining feature of its national economy, social development, and national character for 150 years. It has also manifested what is commonly known as the “resource curse” for its entropic effect on all of the other sectors of the economy. This main driver of its economy is projected to be exhausted roughly within the next 30 years. The focus of this piece is on assessing the prospects of developing a national economy that can create a more equitable and sustainable economic public benefit over the next generation. Each of the pathways summarized herein are from capstone project research reports of graduate students on this issue. It is ultimately intended to be a demonstration of conducting applied future-oriented anticipatory action learning.

The discovery of a lot of natural resources such as petroleum, natural gas, and minerals has become the source of poverty, deprivation, and inequality in some countries. The failure to properly use those resources has been associated with the “resource curse” or “paradox of plenty” concept. This happens when the resource-rich countries fail to benefit fully from their natural resources’ wealth, something that leads to the failure of the governments of the relevant countries to respond effectively and efficiently to public welfare requirements. In recent years, Tanzania has discovered a lot of oil and gas resources which are expected to contribute more to the sustainable development of the country. However, the question here is whether Tanzania will not face the challenge of resource curse as it has been observed in other developing countries that are rich in natural resources. Thus, this paper is intended to analyze the relationship between the resource curse, natural resources, and economy. It examines the resource curse in some contracting countries such as Zambia, Nigeria, and Gabon. It furthermore pinpoints on how Tanzania can avoid the resource curse.

The emergence of the exploration of crude oil in the Niger Delta area of Nigeria, has awarded the region worldwide renown as the economic backbone of the country, but also as a conflict flashpoint. Drawing from the propositions of the resource curse theory, the paper identifies Nigeria’s rentier state structure as the underlining cause linked to the citing of conflict and corruption, as the reasons for the occurrence of oil theft in the Niger Delta. Also, the Dutch disease is identified as an economic explanation of the resource curse theory, and this is used to identify the economic implications of oil theft in the Niger Delta at the national level. In addition, the rentier state structure is used to identify the social implications of the occurrence of oil theft at the local level in the Niger Delta region. The paper posits that economic implications include reduced revenue, increased unemployment, and diversification of the economy. The social implications also include sustained conflict, curbed social development, and displacement of persons. To combat the illegal practice of oil theft, it is recommended that transparency and accountability should be adhered to in the relations among government, oil-producing communities and multinational corporations. Keywords: Niger Delta, oil theft, resource curse, sustainable development, security and conflict

This study reviews the theoretical literature concerning the resource curse as it pertains to the impact of natural resources upon economic growth and corruption in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and how the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) membership can be of help. The EITI is an international standard promoting open and transparent resource governance through disclosure mechanisms in the resource value chain. Corruption has been associated with less-than-average economic growth in resource-rich countries. This research concludes that the theoretical review found that through the dissemination of disclosures in the natural resource sector, the EITI can potentially reduce the prevalence of corruption in implementing countries in SSA and it can address negative economic growth outcomes associated with resource abundance. However, there is not much evidence empirically needed to suggest this.

The fact that the increase in natural resource revenues is not adequately transferred to human capital investments is one of the main reasons for explaining the weak economic growth performance. The findings of numerous studies investigating the relationship between healthcare expenditures and natural resource abundance in natural resource-rich countries confirm this assertion. These findings can be considered as a source of information in the process of determining the policies regarding human capital investments to be implemented in natural resource-rich countries. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between the abundance of natural resources and health expenditures by using data from 2000 to 2016 for GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) member countries consisting of United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Oman. The empirical results indicated that there is no causal relationship between the variables of GCC countries except Bahrain and UAE. This result shows that the resource curse hypothesis is partially valid. Therefore, GCC countries aiming to increase their economic growth performances by implementing a diversification strategy in production should allocate more sources to health expenditures in order to increase their labor efficiency.Keywords: healthcare expenditures, natural resource, Gulf Cooperation Council member countriesJEL Classifications: H51, N55, J24DOI: https://doi.org/10.32479/ijeep.8667

The term “resource curse” refers to the socio-economic problems associated with mineral resources. There is a perception that rich natural resources can be a “curse” rather than a blessing for economic development, and most countries with rich natural resources grow more slowly than countries with scarce resources. The author aims to identify the main causes of the “resource curse” phenomenon as one of the challenges for sustainable development in Russia. The following tasks are set: to analyze the origin of the “resource curse” concept, to study the analysis of Chinese, Russian, and Western researchers about the “resource curse”, to determine the conditions for this phenomenon. Special attention is paid to solving the problem of resource dependence at the regional and state levels, as well as involving cooperation at the global level on the basis of justice, equality and mutual benefit. It is noted that to get out of the “resource trap” you need not only to overcome the traditional “Dutch disease”, but also need to avoid the “American syndrome”. It was concluded that the “resource curse” can be considered as a variety of comparative advantage trap. With the development of new energy sources, countries with rich traditional energy sources face more severe challenges. Their resolution requires comprehensive reform and the creation of new growth pole for sustainable socio-economic development (which is based on political stability), on the other hand, it is necessary to avoid excessive “financialization” of the market economy.

This article examines the origin and development of Soviet dependence on oil and gas. We show that the country’s dependence on oil (and gas) exports is largely explained by its relatively low domes...

The impact of natural resource exploitation has been a controversial topic, subject to intense debate. The literature has traditionally focused on its consequences on national socioeconomic development. More recently, scholars concentrated on local effects following greater availability of data at the subnational and project level. We add to the literature by concentrating on Romanian oil and gas operations, a mature region with a long history of hydrocarbon activities. Such regions have seldom been studied and we argue that in light of the ongoing energy transition these should garner greater interest, particularly those located within the European Union where environmental pressure is significant. Our methodology consists of testing the ability of the random forest classification algorithm to distinguish between local communities with oil and gas operations present and those without on a number of indicators which could be broadly considered developmental. The algorithm fails to accurately classify hydrocarbon-intensive communities, indicating that there are no significant differences between these and the rest. We argue that this is likely due to the limited tax collection powers of local governments, with royalties going directly to the central government with no specific distribution provision at the local level. Another potential explanation may be the diversification of local economies and existing related manufacturing and services activities.

This article seeks to address a policy quandary: despite Nigeria’s history of oil exploitation since 1956 and institutionalization of the Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) in 2004, why has the country not been able to address the resource wealth–poverty dilemma? Is it that the EITI’s governance model is too Western to address Nigeria’s resource curse? It has been established that a country’s propensity to integrate EITI principles in the oil industry is largely dependent not only on the existence of institutions, but also on the level of institutional development. Norway and Nigeria both created policy and regulatory systems. Norway’s more competent administrative structures grew into a self-regulatory system but, by contrast, Nigeria’s indigenous civil service never developed institutional arrangements sufficient to integrate the oil industry into the entire national or regional institutional framework. Considering these historical and contextual differences between Nigeria and Norway, this article employs ‘stakeholder analysis’ to construct a framework of ‘thinking’ regarding how the oil sector could be effectively governed in Nigeria (Figure 7), a country with a robust civil society but a complex political system: in such countries, evolution of what I call a ‘self-reinforcing system of institutional incompatibility’ is inevitable, but institutionalization of foreign models such as EITI is often difficult to achieve.

Since the discovery in 2007 of oil and gas in commercial quantities, Ghana has made some progress in passing several policies - such as local content and participation framework policies. This is ostensibly to stem the effects of "resource curse", whereby countries with a greater quantity of natural resources are underdeveloped in comparison to those countries with fewer natural resources. Putting it differently, the country's local content policy is meant to stimulate industry development by indigenizing the needs of the petroleum industry. However, this aim is constrained by the country's infrastructure deficit - about $2.5 billion each year - limiting the budget for enabling the growth of indigenous companies. This study proposes policy options for enhancing local content implementation through infrastructure development. To this end, the policy implementations in Angola, Brazil and Norway are reviewed, using a purposively sampled set of research participants for interviewing. The study finds that regulatory institutions and the legal framework should be strengthened in order to attract private investment in infrastructure development. In addition, a special provision should be inserted in future petroleum contracts, so as to support the infrastructure fund - both through infrastructure-for-oil trade and also through encouraging voluntary contributions from oil companies in exchange for reduced taxes. The findings contribute to the existing literature in local content development, moving the discussion away from training, local employment, and goods and services targets, and instead moving towards development of the country's local infrastructure in order to ensure the sustainable development of indigenous and foreign businesses.

This article aims to analyse the effects of coal and minerals on human development index in South and East Kalimantan Provinces of Indonesia. Historically, Kalimantan was famously known as the largest contributor of coal and mineral production in Indonesia. Under Indonesia's fiscal decentralization policy which effectively ran since 2004, we test: do revenues from coal and minerals negatively affect Human Development Index (HDI)? By focusing on nine coal giant areas within these two provinces that have longer mining histories, and linking it with the coal boom event since the 2000’s, and using panel data analysis with fixed effects controlled, we find that coal and mineral revenues have a positive effect on HDI, contrary with resource curse hypothesis. The results remain consistent regardless of inclusion of other important covariates such as the past level of institutional quality and net student enrolment ratio, or whether revenues in all non-renewable resources are used. However, the positive impact found is small in magnitude. For example, for every 10 percentage points increase in the share in coal and mineral revenues in local government budgets, HDI increases by 0.0085 points, ceteris paribus.Keywords: Coal and mineral, Mining, Natural Resources, Human Development IndexJEL Classifications: H50, I15, I25, I31DOI: https://doi.org/10.32479/ijeep.8711

The recent crash in the international crude oil price and the fluctuations in the price of gold force oil-net-exporting and gold-producing African countries into recession, thereby necessitating the government to budget for the deficit to cater for the revenue inadequacy. To this end, this study examines the role of deficit finance in the economy of natural resource-abundant nations in Africa to provide an alternative explanation to the resource curse and Dutch disease syndromes. We use the fully modified ordinary least squares as the technique of estimation, and results show that natural resources positively impact output growth in Angola, Egypt, Nigeria, and Tanzania, while they negatively affect output growth in South Africa. Also, in Egypt, Tanzania, and South Africa, Dutch disease is not a problem as the exchange rate negatively affects output growth, while it is a problem in Angola and Nigeria. Lastly, deficit financing positively enhances output growth only in Angola and South Africa, while it is significant only in both Tanzania and Angola. We, therefore, recommend that South Africa should utilise its positive fiscal stance to augment the adverse effect of its natural resources on output growth, while Egypt, Nigeria, and Tanzania should source more funds from external sources to finance deficits and improve the efficiency of fiscal deficits on output growth.

Ghana’s Petroleum Revenue Management Act 815 (amended to Act 893 in 2015) established the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) in 2011 with the mandate to ensure accountabili...

Several studies suggest that the extractive industry has negative consequences for gender equality despite the often positive growth impact of natural resources. We re-examine this claim at the sub-state level in sub-Saharan Africa and argue that we need to differentiate between ownership arrangements in the extractive industry. To test our argument on the gender dimension of the resource curse, this article employs unique data on the control rights of minerals within sub-Saharan countries as well as data from Afrobarometer and Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). Our quantitative analyses explore how international vs. domestic ownership of copper, diamond and gold mines affects the labor market integration of females and intimate partner violence. The regression results suggest in line with our theoretical expectations that gender-specific structural labor market shifts within extractive industries are contingent on mineral control rights. Our models show that within mining areas, only domestic ownership reduces male unemployment. While domestic mining seems to reinforce the traditional male breadwinner model, internationally owned mineral extraction induces structural labor market changes: women abandon subsistence farming activities and migrate to the service sector. Our results further indicate that this shift of traditional gender roles within rural mining areas is associated with less intimate partner violence.