Working Paper
New industrial policy and the extractive industries
Industrial policy is back. Advocates for industrial policy argue that the important question is not whether such policies should be applied at all, but how to design and implement them. For the extractive industries this development poses a challenge...
Working Paper
Protecting the environment during and after resource extraction
Natural resources extraction inevitably imposes environmental injuries including diversion of scarce water away from pressing local needs, disruption of fragile ecosystems, and longer-range and often irreparable harm. These fall most forcefully on...
Blog
What role for East African hydrocarbons in the global economy post-Paris COP21?
by
Evelyn Dietsche
October 2017
Over the past decade significant hydrocarbon discoveries have been made across East Africa. Unsurprisingly, the respective governments countries have...
Working Paper
Extractive industries and development
In common with several other low-income African economies, in recent years Mozambique has seen a significant expansion of interest and investment in its long-established extractives industries. Huge new gas finds in particular have led to...
Research Brief
Potential benefits and pitfalls of extractives in Mozambique
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...
Working Paper
Rowing against the current
The exploitation of natural resources is a huge opportunity, but one that carries considerable risks. Relative prices in resource-exporting economies tend to push them towards economic structures dominated by the resource sector. This paper explores...
Blog
Forecasting revenues from extractive industries: Information asymmetries and other disadvantages of host governments
by
Alan R. Roe
February 2018
In the first part of this blog, Alan R. Roe writes about the difficulties governments face in predicting revenues from extractive industries. Read...
Blog
Information asymmetries in extractive industries: What can be done?
by
Alan R. Roe
February 2018
In the second part of this blog, Alan R. Roe discusses what is known about the informational failures that pose challenges for governments in...
Working Paper
Extractives for development
Countries face both challenges and opportunities in using their extractive industries to achieve more inclusive development—particularly in the developing world. Yet while a large national income can result from resource wealth, it can also be...
Working Paper
Uganda’s oil
We study Uganda’s journey to become a petroleum producer and provide estimates regarding the size and timing of the oil revenues to be expected. At an average US$38 per capita per year over a 33-year period, oil revenue by itself will not be...
Book
Extractive Industries
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. New initiatives recognize that...
Blog
Want to catch up on UNU-WIDER research? Here are 10 of the most interesting papers published over the last year
In this blog, the managing editor of the WIDERAngle shares his personal view on some of the most important —and potentially overlooked— work recently...
Working Paper
Tax provisioning by extractive industry multinational subsidiaries
Extractive industries are spread across mining of metal and minerals, oil and gas, among others. Multinationals in these sectors are confronted with different challenges ranging from corruption, political risk, economic uncertainty, sunk costs, and...
Working Paper
Illicit financial flows and country-by-country reporting in extractive industries
Economic data are important in governing the international political economy. Some of the most widely used macro statistics risk being undermined by systematic misalignment in reporting of economic activity due to illicit financial flows, as well as...
Blog
The zero carbon agenda and metals demand: some major dilemmas
by
Alan R. Roe
October 2021
The transition to net zero over the next few decades will involve a large increase in the global demand for many metals essential to the renewables...
Blog
The value of non-renewable resources in the era of climate change
by
Amir Lebdioui
October 2021
The economic decline of Nauru, an island in the Central Pacific, is a cautionary tale. Nauru was the highest GDP per capita country in the world in...
Blog
Looking ahead to COP26
The long-awaited COP26 in Glasgow is about to start. Billed as the most important COP to date, it is widely seen as a last chance to avoid a global...
Blog
Reducing wasted gas emissions is an opportunity for clean air and climate
by
Kathryn McPhail, Etienne Romsom
October 2021
The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) is seen as the last best chance for countries and companies to set out how they are actually...
Research Brief
Oil in Ghana
Working Paper
Local content, supply chains, and shared infrastructure
Local content policies in the context of extractive industries have attracted increased interest in recent years. Most countries with a significant extractive industry have included local content requirements either in their legislation or...