Suchergebnisse

Natural resources are neither a blessing nor a curse; intrinsically they can neither positively nor negatively affect political and economic developments. Rather, the negative effects of natural resources are correlated with a country's "structured contingency": the existing political configuration through which the oil revenue is managed and spent. Cambodia's political configuration is dominated by interlocking patron-client networks that require a leader to capture and maintain the loyalty of key sections of the politico-commercial elite by fulfilling their material aspirations through the distribution of perquisites. Under these conditions, corruption is widespread, the government institutions are unresponsive, and resources are misallocated. Examining the existing political configuration and the precedent set by the forest and land sectors, this article argues that future oil revenue will likely be used partly for self-enrichment of the political elites and partly to promote political legitimacy of the ruling elites through the politics of gift giving and patronage. The situation will likely have two significant impacts on Cambodia: (1) inequitable development and increased income inequality and (2) perpetuation of Cambodia's hybrid democracy, preventing any further movement toward democratic consolidation. (Asian Aff/GIGA)

Gold is frequently mined in rainforests that can provide either gold or forest benefits, but not both. This conflict in resource use occurs in Ghana, a developing country in the tropics where the capital needed for mining is obtained from foreign direct investment (FDI). We use a dynamic model to show that an ad valorem severance tax on gross revenue can be used to internalize environmental opportunity costs. The optimal tax must equal the ratio of marginal benefits from forest use to marginal benefits from gold extraction. Furthermore, the tax should increase (decrease) when adjusted net return on all other assets in the economy is higher (lower) than the growth in the price of gold. Empirical results suggest that the 3 per cent tax rate currently used in Ghana is too low to fully represent the external cost of extraction (i.e., lost forest benefits).

AbstractDoes land fragmentation impair spatially expansive natural resource use? We conduct empirical tests using ownership variation on the Bakken, one of the world's most valuable shale oil reserves. Long before shale was discovered, US policies created a mosaic of private, jointly owned and tribal government parcels on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. We find that all three forms of fragmentation reduced production during the 2010–15 oil boom, especially joint ownership and the interspersion of small parcels of government and private land. We estimate implied gains from consolidation and discuss implications for the use (or conservation) of other spatially expansive resources.