We document that an oil price boom triggers dissatisfaction with one's income, and confirm that this is not driven by changes in real economic conditions. Unique data from Kazakhstan allows us to exploit time, sectoral and spatial variation to identify the impact of the recent oil boom on...

Contracts between governments and international firms are difficult to enforce, especially under weak institutions: governments are tempted to renegotiate tax payments after investments occurred. Theoretically, such a hold-up problem is solved by using selfenforcing agreements that increase the...

Most modern mines in the developing world are located in rural areas, where agriculture is the main source of livelihood. This creates the potential of negative spillovers to farmers through competition for key inputs (such as land) and environmental pollution. To explore this issue, we examine...

This paper shows that using yields may not be informative of the relationship between farm size and productivity in the context of small-scale farming. This occurs because, in addition to productivity, yields pick up size-dependent market distortions and decreasing returns to scale. As a result,...

In this paper we show that the study of the farm size-productivity relationship hinges on the choice of productivity measure. Our main insight is that using yields, a partial measure of productivity, may not be informative for the size-productivity relationship because, in addition to total...

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...