Time consistency problems can arise when environmental taxes are employed to encourage firms to take irreversible abatement decisions. Setting a high carbon tax, for instance, would induce firms to invest in low-carbon technology, yet once investment has occurred the government can then reduce...

This paper studies the distributional impact of commodity price shocks over both the short and very long run.  Using a GARCH model, we find that Australia experienced more volatility than many commodity exporting developing countries over the periods 1865-1940 and 1960-2007.  A single equation...

Agriculture is the largest sector in most sub-Saharan economies in terms of employment, and it plays an important role in supplying food and export earnings.  Rural poverty rates remain high, and labor productivity is strikingly low.  This paper asks how these factors shape the role of...

We study the impact of growth and growth accelerations on poverty and inequality in Indonesia using a new panel dataset covering 26 provinces over the period 1977-2010.  This new dataset allows us to distinguish between mining and non-mining sectors of the economy.  We find that growth in...

Monetary policy can play an important role in managing oil discoveries. Ideally governments will use fiscal policy to smooth consumption of oil income. In practice this often does not happen, as governments delay spending until oil revenues are received. This induces changes in the economy, both...

Abstract. This paper studies the distributional impact of commodity price shocks over the both the short and very long run. Using a GARCH model, we find that Australia experienced more volatility than many commodity exporting developing countries over the periods 1865- 1940 and 1960-2007. A...

We use the rapid expansion of the number of mineral mines in Sub- Saharan Africa to explore changes in local labor markets. Matching over two decades of panel data on industrial mines to survey data for half a million women and exploiting the spatial and temporal variation in the data in a...

In this paper we explore whether low rates of sustained technology use can be explained by heterogeneity in returns to adoption.  To do so we evaluate impacts of the Cocoa Abrabopa Association, which provided a package of fertilizer and other inputs on credit to cocoa farmers in Ghana.  High...

This paper investigates the role of aid in mitigating the adverse effects of commodity export price shocks on growth in commodity-dependent countries.  Using a large cross-country dataset, we find that negative shocks matter for short-term growth, while the ex ante risk of shocks does not seem...

The current paper demonstrates a dochotomy of the growth response to changes in the barter terms of trade (TOT), employing as case studies the following two African countries: Botswana and Nigeria.  Using distributed-lag analysis, the paper finds that the effect of TOT on output is positive and...