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Publications (20)
– The last 25 years
Ever since the British Industrial Revolution, energy has been a key factor of production. Recent history has proved no exception. The pattern of primary commercial energy consumption since 1965 is presented in Figure 1. What is also clear is that, since the start of this century, energy consumption...
I spent the last couple of days at a fascinating workshop at UNU-WIDER on the role of extractive industries in development. Tony Addison, UNU-WIDER Chief Economist-Deputy Director, and Alan Roe, UNU-WIDER Non-Resident Senior Research Fellow and Oxford Policy Management Associate are pulling together...
– Success and failure in the extractive sector
A central difficulty for extractive activity is that benefits accrue at the national level but disruptions are highly localized. Companies recognise that these imbalances need to be addressed and adopt active programmes to improve local benefits. These programmes have had mixed past success, partly...
The recent publication of the 3rd edition of ICMM’s The Role of Mining in National Economies (hereafter RoMiNE3) provides us with the welcome biennial review of the global situation as it affects the large mining and metals industry. In addition to its regular update of the Mining Contribution Index...
Which of the following do you think is the most important need in developing countries? Free health services for all to reduce child and maternal mortality Universal and decent quality education to provide children with the skills for productive jobs Cheap petrol and electricity Unless you are...
Blog
The recent anti-corruption summit in London highlighted a much-publicized issue in development—transparency is crucial in the minerals sector. However, an event at UNU-WIDER made it clear that this is only one of many key issues related to the extractive industries, government revenues, and...
Industries based on natural resources such as oil, gas, and minerals can play a major positive role in the development of low- and middle-income countries, however they can also lead to a very narrow kind of growth which excludes the poor and damages the economy and environment. Good policy is the...
To read this blog, on a computer screen or mobile phone (or even paper!), a manufacturing process used plastics derived from oil, and metals mined from ores. Many of the materials are non-renewable (oil, gas, metals), some are recycled, and some are from renewable sources (perhaps the paper). The...
Blog
– Information asymmetries and other disadvantages of host governments
In the first part of this blog, Alan R. Roe writes about the difficulties governments face in predicting revenues from extractive industries. Read part two here. Countries endowed with rich mineral or oil and gas resources have many competing uses for the revenues that arise from the production of...
Blog
– What can be done?
In the second part of this blog, Alan R. Roe discusses what is known about the informational failures that pose challenges for governments in projecting revenues from extractive industries. Read the first part here. Important new light has been thrown on information gaps faced by governments in...
Blog
The UNU-WIDER project on extractives for development seeks to examine how poor and middle-income countries can best use their natural resource wealth to promote development. It is well understood that minerals, metals, oil or gas (collectively known as ‘extractives’) have for some years been...
My previous blog, which you can read here, commented on the manner in which mining companies had been able to respond to the recent decline in metals prices by significantly reducing their costs of production. In fact, this response arose partly from an exogenous event (lower energy prices), partly...
Blog
Originally posted by Oxford Policy Management The extractives sector, and the way it works, continues to change rapidly and its importance to many lower-income economies continues to increase. There is ever-more recognition of the need for development that is both inclusive and sustainable –...
There has been great excitement in recent years about the huge oil and gas finds, offshore and onshore, in a number of lower- and lower-middle-income countries such as Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and, more recently, Kenya. The scale of the potential reserves, future production levels and government...
– How inflated expectations of oil revenues led to a deterioration in macroeconomic management
Prior to the discovery of oil, Ghana was one of the stars of the ‘Africa rising’ story, with an established track record of macroeconomic stability and fiscal discipline. When oil was discovered, there were great hopes that Ghana would avoid the ‘resource curse’. Initial signs were promising — the...
– Lessons from international experience
Mozambique has seen a significant expansion of interest and investment in its extractive industries. New gas finds in the past ten years have led to expectations that these industries will contribute very significantly to the country’s future economic development and its long-term structural change...
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