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Publications (258)
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South Africa frequently experiences rolling blackouts (‘load shedding’) due to shortfalls in electricity generation. This is a common problem across the developing world, and yet the developmental impacts of insufficient and unstable electricity supply, and the benefits of mitigating this, are...
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South Africa’s current electricity crises have worsened, placing the country on an uncertain and turbulent economic trajectory.To identify the manufacturing sub-sectors that are most vulnerable to this crises, we use the input–output matrices for the period between 1993 and 2021 to develop a sub...
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Companies in the oil, gas, and mining sectors face ever intensifying scrutiny over their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices and impacts: from civil society but also from investment funds and other stakeholders with ESG mandates. Companies with good practices—and the paper...
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This paper analyses the risks facing resource-dependent countries. These include: (i) economic mismanagement (the ‘resource curse’); (ii) political mismanagement; (iii) environmental damage (climate change and the destruction of natural capital). It distinguishes ‘risk’ (which can be addressed...
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The extractives industries are highly controversial but remain vitally important in much of the developing world. This paper considers their role in reducing energy poverty and discusses scenarios for the future of the global markets for oil, gas, and metals (emphasizing the increasing importance of...
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This study examines the effect of climate on citywide labour productivity in the Accra city region. We use data from Ghana’s Integrated Business and Establishment Survey dataset, climate data at the sub-city level from Ghana Meteorological Agency, and satellite and reanalysis data, as well as key...
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Frequent electricity outages threaten to impede the benefits of expanded access achieved by many developing countries in recent decades. A large literature documents these negative effects, however almost none consider labour market effects. This paper merges labour force survey microdata with high...
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– Examining socio-psychological characteristics and information provision
Worldwide, enterprises are hit by disasters such as cyclones and floods. Despite being impacted negatively, most enterprises do not prepare for future disasters. This study aims at understanding the determinants of enterprises’ disaster preparedness. It first examines whether specific socio...
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Individuals are at their most mental plasticity in their impressionable years (ages 18–25 years) forming long-term attitudes and behaviours essential to functioning in a society, such as trust.In this paper we ask how exposure to natural disasters within the impressionable years may affect the...
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– Evidence from Viet Nam
We examine the impact of temperature shocks and climate change on household financial behaviour in Viet Nam. To do so, we first estimate the effect of temperature on household borrowing and savings using Vietnamese longitudinal data that matches satellite reanalysis temperature data with household...
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– COVID-19 and climate change
Terrorist and other types of armed groups often exploit natural and human-made disasters and emergencies to advance their causes. This paper studies how some armed groups have responded to two recent global emergencies—climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. It examines the messaging and actions...
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– The case of ‘Solar Mamas’ who bring light
This paper examines multiple facets of New Delhi’s development cooperation with countries in Africa and argues that grassroots organizations in India that find innovative, low-cost technological solutions to developmental challenges can help governments and multilateral agencies craft inclusive...
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– Insights from wildfires across the globe
Natural disasters cause economic damages and may exacerbate disparities in income distribution among countries across the globe. This paper employs satellite data on real-time active fire locations to evaluate the short-term impact of forest fires on economic inequality around the world. Using quasi...
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– Few harmed much, fewer still harmed too much
Building on Rawls’ theory of justice and Sen’s theory of capabilities, I present an outline of social justice under climate shocks, illustrating it with the experiences of persons with disability. Social justice holds when inequality is responded to by rules that afford more primary goods, such as...
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After 50 years of optimistic predictions that marine mining will soon take off, it still remains to be seen if and when this will happen. In 2018 the total value of all marine mining, including both offshore mining and the so far non-existing deep-seabed mining, was estimated to be around US$35...
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There is substantial empirical literature on the impact of climate vulnerability on economic outcomes in developing countries. However, this literature is still weak on the impact of climate vulnerability on tax revenue mobilization. To enrich the existing literature, this paper aims to investigate...
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Political violence is a worldwide problem that has been on the rise over the past decade. The international dimension of domestic repression and dissent is a particularly relevant factor yet surprisingly understudied. In particular, governments that heavily depend on foreign aid may crack down on...
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This paper examines the impact of the 2001 Gujarat earthquake on age at marriage and other assortative matching outcomes. Using the 2004–05 wave of the India Human Development Survey and employing a difference-in-differences strategy, we document that the earthquake reduced the age at marriage for...
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– The Global Methane Pledge—opportunities and risks
The global energy transition is happening, but too slowly to limit climate change to acceptable levels, for diverse reasons. Carbon emissions policies and measures focus too little on absolute emission targets and too much on relative measures such as carbon intensity. Focus is needed on early...
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This paper applies an environmentally extended input–output analysis, leveraging the Eora database, to estimate the global raw material footprints of 51 African nations from 1995 to 2015. It employs least absolute shrinkage and selection operator and panel regression models to quantify the effects...
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We examine inequality convergence over the past three decades and ask if environmentally related impacts on health, and their effect on human capital, are responsible for the slow rate of inequality reduction in countries. Though higher initial incidence of environmentally related impacts on health...
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There has been much discussion on climate change and its adverse effects on agriculture, including excessive loss of food production. In regions such as sub-Saharan Africa, where agriculture is the major source of household livelihoods, shocks in weather patterns affect farmers’ expectations of farm...
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This paper, the first of two on global oil theft and fraud, discusses the prevalence, methods, and consequences of global oil theft, valued at US$133 billion per year and equivalent to 5–7 per cent of the global market for crude oil and petroleum fuels. However, the impact of oil theft is...
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Extractive industries form an important part of the economy for many developing countries, but their impact on growth and welfare remains understudied. With global efforts to transition to net-zero carbon emissions in the coming decades, understanding the local impacts of the extractives sector is...
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– Application of a new computable general equilibrium (CGE) model
Myanmar is facing climate change (CC) induced changes to the productivity of their critically important rice sector over the coming century. Moreover, the recent five-year Myanmarese Agriculture Development Strategy (ADS) sets out a vision of achieving an ‘…inclusive, competitive, food and nutrition...
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– Policy options for a sustainable fiscal regime
Zambia has changed its mineral tax regime repeatedly during the past decades in a bid to raise mineral revenue, but with only modest success. This paper looks at what the country needs to do to create a mining fiscal regime that could sustain operations, boost output, and raise revenues without...
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Between 2005 and 2018, 41 countries had at least one riot directly associated with popular demand for fuel. We make use of a new international dataset on fuel riots to explore the effects of fuel prices and price regimes on fuel riots. In line with prior expectations, we find that large domestic...
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This paper explores agricultural performance of Mozambique, its institutional weaknesses, and the underlying factors that underpin an unsatisfactory performance during many decades. We point to the role of systemic political instability and violence combined with challenges to state legitimacy...
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– Disentangling the interdependencies
Climate change is expected to increase the risk in agricultural production due to increasing temperatures and rainfall variability. Smallholders can adjust by diversifying income sources, including through migration. Most existing studies investigate whether households send a migrant after...
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This study examines the interaction between formalization of the artisanal and small-scale mining subsector and the regulation of negative environmental impacts in Tanzania. Formalization generally seeks to move the artisanal and small-scale mining subsector to legal status. Using documents, reviews...
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Effectiveness of strategic environmental assessment in promoting sustainable development in Tanzania
This paper examines the extent to which strategic environmental assessment (SEA) is implemented in Tanzania and whether its implementation is in line with generally practised procedures/criteria. Out of 17 completed SEA, eight cases were purposively selected and assessed by applying an analytical...
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– Evidence from Idai
Cyclone Idai, the most devastating cyclone ever recorded in Southern Africa, caused havoc in large parts of central Mozambique, especially the port city of Beira, upon its landfall in March 2019. This study reviews and compares measurements of the impact, using various sources of remote sensing data...
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– RCT evidence from Mozambique
In March 2019, Cyclone Idai hit central Mozambique and caused widespread damage, including businesses in the enterprise sector. We use panel data and a randomized controlled trial to estimate the impact of unconditional cash grants on micro enterprises and their recovery. We find that, on average...
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This study investigates how manufacturing companies were affected by tropical Cyclone Idai, which struck Central Mozambique in March 2019. The analysis builds upon a representative sample of 464 enterprises located in the cities of Beira and Chimoio which were interviewed 6 and 12 months after the...
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– A social preference experiment in Mindoro, Philippines
This paper presents a framed field experiment on ecological altruism in Mindoro, Philippines. Behavioural differences between ethnic groups in Mindoro—the Tagalogs and the Mangyans—were investigated. We designed a two-part donation task (i.e. dictator game) where the recipient of the donation was a...
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– A reconceptualization of natural resource value in the era of climate change
Underlying the management of revenues from natural resource extraction is a set of assumptions about how abundant and how valuable these resources are. Nevertheless, existing approaches to measuring the value of extractive resources are seriously flawed. This paper proposes two avenues for improving...
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This second paper on hydrocarbon gas flaring and venting builds on our first, which evaluated the economic and social cost (SCAR) of wasted natural gas. These emissions must be reduced urgently for natural gas to meet its potential as an energy-transition fuel under the Paris Agreement on Climate...
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Atmospheric emissions urgently need to reduce for natural gas to fulfill its potential role in the energy transition to achieve the Paris Agreement on climate change. This paper establishes the magnitude and trends of flaring and venting in oil and gas operations, as well as their emissions and...
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– Revenue generation, investor-stakeholder alignment, and public policy
This paper discusses the political economy of oil in Uganda since the announcement of its discovery in 2006. It focuses on the dynamics of oil revenue generation (pre-commercial production) and expenditure, investor-stakeholder contestation (i.e. between bureaucrats, investors/oil companies, and...
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– The case of BRICS
As the world battles with the triple problems of social, economic, and environmental challenges, it has become important to focus both policy and research efforts on these. Therefore, this study examines the effect of wealth inequality on CO2 emissions in five emerging economies: Brazil, Russia...
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– Economic and policy implications for natural resource exporters in developing countries
The emergence of a mass market for electric vehicles (EVs) offers considerable development opportunities for resource exporters, given their intensive raw material requirements, including for cobalt, nickel, lithium, copper, aluminium, and manganese. To exploit the benefits of new demand, empirical...
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This paper explores the potential impacts of the transition to a low-carbon future for the taxation of extractive resources. The global debate on climate change has firmly moved on from the question of whether countries ought to shift towards such a future to that of how they are going to achieve it...
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– Evolving trends during the transition to a low carbon future
The first objective of this paper is to update earlier assessments of mineral dependence in lower-income countries. In 2018, the mining of metals and coal continued to be an important contributor to the economies of several low- and middle-income countries. As in our previous calculations of the...
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– The role of liquefied natural gas and implications for East African producers
This study provides an overview of the use of natural gas and liquefied natural gas in Asia, both historic, current, and with an outlook for the future. Traditionally, Asia has been a strong liquefied natural gas producing region as well as the premier liquefied natural gas market. This continues to...
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– Evidence from Tanzania
In this paper, we examine the relationship between childhood exposure to adverse weather shocks and nutritional and health outcomes of children in Tanzania. Using household panel data matched with spatially disaggregated data on weather shocks, we exploit the plausibly exogenous variations in the...
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– Country priorities, fuel types, and energy decisions
This paper provides an overview of the energy transition in Asia. It sets out the underlying drivers and how these set energy transition priorities in China, India, and South East Asia. It particularly describes the role of (liquefied) natural gas in the growing energy demand and changing energy mix...
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– Evidence for Colombia
This paper studies the legacies of wartime institutions, measured as rebelocracy, on the ability of households to cope with negative income shocks. Rebelocracy is the social order established by non-state armed actors in the communities they control. By providing public goods and a predictable...
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– Assessing the short-term impact on consumption and poverty of the 2015 flood in Mozambique
Mozambique is among the most disaster-prone countries in the world. A bigger than usual, and mostly unexpected, flood occurred in the central-northern region of the country in the first few months of 2015, causing huge damage to infrastructures. In this paper, we use a nationally representative...
Displaying 48 of 258 results