Domestic laws are the ideal legal instrument to regulate the mining sector’s contribution to climate change mitigation and adaptation. Even so, as a stop-gap-measure, governments may consider updating model mining development agreements (MMDAs) or negotiating climate­-related contractual...

There is an increasing tension between the Iranian Government and the west on an increasingly likely European oil embargo and the Iranian threat to close the Strait of Hormuz. The main question is: What will happen to the international oil prices in the case of shocks in the flow of Iranian oil...

Global crude oil prices surged in 2017 on the back of the production-cut agreement between OPEC and a group of non-members including Russia. In January–November 2017, Russian crude oil was traded at an average of $52/bbl in the global market, adding $10 to the previous year's price. In late...

The first objective of this paper is to update earlier assessments of mineral dependence in lower-income countries. In 2018, the mining of metals and coal continued to be an important contributor to the economies of several low- and middle-income countries. As in our previous calculations of the...

What does global trade mean for the environment of any particular place? It can produce place-based transformations that are both positive and negative. The Kuznets curve is often touted as a solution that resolves the conflict between trade promotion and environmental protection by purporting...

This paper theoretically and empirically investigates the effect of natural resource rents on the process of economic liberalization and a potential moderating effect of the level of democracy. A simple political-economic model is developed in which the government in an autocratic country faces...

This paper and associated presentation explores the economic phenomenon of the so called ‘resource curse’. We begin by defining the phrase and outlining the main individual ‘curses’ and their causes to give the reader a broad understanding of what is meant by the phrase. This is followed...

Activists around the world seek to expose a global system that fails to tax multinationals adequately and thus deprives governments of needed revenues, with profound effects for development in the world's poorest nations. These tax activists have sparked a global movement, with groups all over...

The manner in which governments charge mineral resource producers has been the subject of considerable debate. In particular, there is a continuing debate about whether royalties should be reduced or eliminated, the preferred alternative then being some variant of an income-based charge such as...