This paper contributes to the growing political economy literature of within-country natural resources management, by proposing a new resource policy for the oil-rich southern Italian region of Basilicata. The policy proposal is to establish a (regional) wealth fund in which all the royalty...

This paper discusses the development of four production sectors of the economies in Southeast Asia since the end of the Second World War: agriculture, non-renewable natural resources, manufacturing, and services. First, although Southeast Asia has experienced sectoral transformation toward...

Empirical evidence has suggested a “resource curse” exists, in which countries with abundant resources may have higher initial consumption but then grow more slowly. The effect appears to be dependent on a country's political structure. Theoretical models not typically accounted for...

The paper analyses the impact of natural resource abundance on selected governance indicators. In contrast to earlier studies that are mainly confined to cross-sectional analysis, we use a panel data set with a large number of countries and an extended period of time. Moreover, we employ an...

This paper studies the impact of Yanacocha, a large gold mine in Peru, on the local population. Using annual household data from 1997 to 2006, we nd robust evidence of a positive effect of the mine's demand of local inputs on real income. The effect, an average income increase of 1.7% per 10%...

This paper uses the case of Yanacocha, a large gold mine in Peru, to examine the link between natural resources and local economic development. We find evidence of a positive and sizeable effect of the mine on real income, household consumption and poverty reduction. The effects are driven by...

In recent years economists have recognized that, along with physical and human capital, environmental resources should be viewed as important economic assets, which can be called natural capital. However, the services provided by natural capital are unique. They include the use of resources for...

To study the causal impact of oil royalties on human capital, we exploit quasi-experimental variation arising from a law in Ecuador that transfers resources to municipalities regardless of their oil-producing status. We find that royalties increase the likelihood of students completing primary...

There has been widespread debate about whether the way in which we measure economic activity is fit for purpose in the twenty-first century. One aspect of this debate is to move away from measuring a nation's income (GDP) towards monitoring a nation's assets (their inclusive wealth), as a better...