A large mining project has the potential to be a partner in assisting local communities in their development efforts. Communities located in close proximity to a large mine have every right to expect that the project will benefit their community. Often, reality falls short of their expectations...

We show that the incorporation of offshore entities increases when oil and gas exploration licences are awarded. We exploit leaked data on the incorporation of shell companies and detailed information on tax havens and the awarding rounds of oil licences to construct a new data set covering 119...

This paper discusses the political economy of oil in Uganda since the announcement of its discovery in 2006. It focuses on the dynamics of oil revenue generation (pre-commercial production) and expenditure, investor-stakeholder contestation (i.e. between bureaucrats, investors/oil companies, and...

Are victims of human rights abuses better off with or without economic sanctions targeted at their perpetrators? We study this question in the context of a US human rights policy, Section 1502 of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. By discouraging companies from sourcing 'conflict minerals' from the...

Tanzania is rich with natural resources, which have significant potential to contribute to the country's economic development. Several laws recently passed in Tanzania are dedicated to establishing linkages between foreign firms in natural resource extraction and the local economy. This paper...

The coherence and effectiveness of engagement with the world's 'fragile and conflictaffected states' - beyond ethical imperatives and geo-strategic considerations - turns on answers to two vexing questions. First, on what defensible basis is any given country, at any given historical moment,...

Mozambique has achieved remarkable macroeconomic success over recent decades, boasting one of the world's highest rates of GDP growth. However, absolute poverty remains persistent, spilling over into social unrest. To better understand the link between aggregate growth and household welfare,...

This paper identifies eight political economy factors that influenced governments' policy choices during the most recent global food price crisis. To explain the variety of responses and the policy failures, a framework is proposed that locates policies along the twin dimensions of unitary vs....

This paper suggests that an optimal local content policy in the context of flawed institutions is a more minimal one than those typically pursued by developing countries with recently discovered petroleum reserves. We argue that local content requirements need to be seen as a public expenditure...