Illicit gold flows constitute a major development challenge for governments and a social responsibility challenge for many industries along gold supply chains, including gold refiners and jewelry retailers. This paper highlights aspects of gold supply chains that lack transparency and may...

La extracción ilegal de oro ha crecido en la última década en la Amazonía, en parte debido a los altos precios internacionales de este mineral, la actuación menos estricta de algunos países respecto al medio ambiente y la búsqueda de oportunidades económicas inmediatas. A esto se suman...

This paper investigates the impact of Fair Trade standards on the lives of artisanal gold miners in Ghana. In cooperation with ten mining companies - five of which voluntary enrolled in a program to implement these standards and become Fair Trade certified - I evaluated the impact of these...

The implementation of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes in Indonesia still largely involves charity to the community or efforts to earn a good name in the wider sphere. This is most especially the case in gold mining, where both large companies and community mining use hazardous...

Chinese universities in recent decades have experienced a wave of surging patenting activities. Is the increase in patenting activities evidence that Chinese universities have been catching up with their counterparts outside of China, or are there low-quality “patent bubbles” with the surge?...

This paper aims to fully exploit the heuristic virtues of Keynes’ famous ‘old bottles’ story, deploying a multi-layered argument and drawing out its broadest implications. We show that with this story Keynes was making a very serious point about anti-crisis policies: the need for...

Currently, artisanal and small-scale gold mining, known in the Brazilian Amazon as “garimpagem”, generates direct income to approximately 35,000 gold miners in the Tapajós region. Around 2,000 gold extraction areas are located in this region, operating various technical and organizational...

This paper studies whether extractive resource activities provoke an ecological response on the emergence and proliferation of malaria by altering the reproductive environment of mosquitoes. In January 2004, the government of the Philippines launched the Minerals Action Plan (MAP), which...

We study the origins of entrepreneurship (culture) in the United States. For the analysis we make use of a quasi-natural experiment - the gold rush in the second part of the 19th century. We argue that the presence of gold attracted individuals with entrepreneurial personality traits. Due to a...

Solidification/stabilization (S/S) is a low-cost and efficient method to enhance the mechanical properties of gold ore tailings (GOTs) and to decontaminate contaminated tailings. However, the traditional cement-based stabilization method has problems of environmental pollution and questionable...

In this paper, we study the return on investments in mining for a whole century, starting in the "Golden Age" of resource exploitation in the late nineteenth century. We use a sample of more than 1,000 mining companies, registered on the London Stock Exchange 1869- 1969, but operating on all...

Most research on illicit financial flows (IFFs) has focused on illicit outflows from developing countries and the role of non-state actors in generating IFFs. Less attention has been paid to processes and interfaces through which IFFs enter formal value chains-in effect being 'legalized' before...

Bergbau, soziale Konflikte und Umweltkatastrophen - seit den 1990er Jahren erlebt Lateinamerika einen historischen Rohstoffboom. Welche Rolle spielen die Betreiber der Minen in den Abbauregionen? Wie schaffen sie Akzeptanz unter der lokalen Bevölkerung? Und welche politischen Auswirkungen zieht...

We study the origins of entrepreneurship (culture) in the United States. For the analysis we make use of a quasi-natural experiment - the gold rush in the second part of the 19th century. We argue that the presence of gold attracted individuals with entrepreneurial personality traits. Due to a...

While the development of the mining sector continues to be a strategic priority for Kyrgyzstan, local resistance against gold mining exploitation has been on the rise. Since 2010 there has been an upsurge in social protests related to mining activities from local residents who typically have...

Phytoremediation uses green plants for in-situ removal, degradation, and containment of contaminants in soils, surface waters and groundwaters. However, little research has been conducted on the phytoremediation potential of plant species in removing heavy metals in the contaminated soils within...

The California Gold Rush was an unexpected shock of tremendous size that prompted the costly re-allocation of labor to a frontier region. Using newly-collected archival data, this paper presents estimates of nominal and real wages in Gold Rush California. Consistent with a simple dynamic model...

The strategic case for gold revolves around its long history as a store of value. Humans have been drawn to the yellow metal despite its inability to pay a dividend or provide productive output ownership since somebody first discovered it. From an investment perspective, gold has demonstrated an...