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on Mining |
| By: | Bastianin, Andrea; Rossini, Luca; Testa, Alessandra |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the macroeconomic effects of global copper supply shocks. We identify exogenous disruptions to copper supply using a Bayesian structural VAR of the world copper market that combines sign and narrative restrictions. We then trace the international transmission of the identified shock using a two-step approach based on country-level models for major copper-importing and exporting economies. We find that copper supply shocks raise producer prices and depress industrial activity in importing economies, while exporters benefit from higher world prices through improved terms of trade. Importer-exporter status alone is insufficient to characterize exposure: heterogeneity in responses reflects differences in manufacturing copper intensity and buffering capacity through secondary copper production. |
| Keywords: | Climate Change, Environmental Economics and Policy, Land Economics/Use, Resource/Energy Economics and Policy, Sustainability |
| Date: | 2026–01–13 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:feemwp:387620 |
| By: | Akeliwira, Ayuune George |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the relationship between natural resource rents and poverty in 45 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries from 2011 to 2020. The measure of poverty used is the percentage of the population living below income thresholds of $3.65 and $2.15 per day, which are commonly used by the World Bank to measure poverty in low-income countries. Data for the analysis are drawn from international sources, including the World Bank’s Poverty and Inequality Platform, World Bank Development Indicators, Global Financial Development Indicators, IMF Direction of Trade Statistics, and the Political Regimes of the World dataset (Herre & Roser, 2023). The econometric results, derived from fixed-effects regression models, account for unobserved heterogeneity across countries. The findings indicate that, in aggregate, natural resource rents (from oil, minerals, natural gas, coal, and forests) do not have impact on poverty at any threshold. However, when disaggregating by resource type, the results show that natural gas rents and mineral rents are positively and significantly associated with poverty at all poverty thresholds. These findings strongly support the resource-curse hypothesis, which posits that resource wealth, if not effectively managed, can increase poverty and hinder long-term economic growth. Policymakers in SSA should focus on improving governance and directing resource rents into productive sectors to ensure that resource wealth contributes positively to broader economic development. |
| Keywords: | Poverty, natural resource rents, resource-curse, Sub-Saharan Africa, economic growth |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:334396 |
| By: | Akeliwira, Ayuune George; Owusu-Mensah, Isaac |
| Abstract: | This study examines the relationship between natural resource rents and income inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The empirical analysis covers 24 countries over the period 1998-2020. Econometric estimations are conducted using both fixed and random effects models to account for country-specific and time-invariant factors. Using the Gini coefficient as a proxy for inequality, the results suggest that total natural resource rents do not have a statistically significant effect on income inequality in the region. In contrast, access to financial services and digital technologies appear to be more influential in reducing inequality. The findings highlight the potential importance of inclusive development policies, such as allocating resource wealth to social programs in education, healthcare, and infrastructure. Additionally, promoting economic diversification and strengthening governance institutions may support more effective management of natural resources. The observed negative and statistically significant associations between information and communication technology (ICT) and financial development with inequality indicate that investments in ICT infrastructure and measures to enhance financial inclusion could contribute to addressing income disparities in the region. |
| Keywords: | Inequality, Sub-Saharan Africa, Natural Resource Rents, Gini Coefficient, Economic Growth |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:334397 |
| By: | Gerald Foong; Stephen Machin; Matteo Sandi |
| Abstract: | We study whether economic incentives matter for crime in a novel way, through study of expensive precious metal thefts by thieves stealing catalytic converters. We combine sharp, plausibly exogenous variation in the prices of precious metals embedded in converters with newly assembled U.S. data and multiple research designs. We show that phenomenally fast increases in precious metal prices generated a sizeable and rapid rise in auto-part thefts, while subsequent price declines and policy responses quickly reversed this pattern. The resulting boom-and-bust dynamics provide clean evidence that both demand- and supply-side economic forces shape property crime and inform targeted deterrence policies. |
| Keywords: | expensive precious metals, auto-part theft, catalytic converters |
| Date: | 2026–01–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp2141 |
| By: | Woolford Jayne (European Commission - JRC); Kostarakos Ilias (European Commission - JRC) |
| Abstract: | Silesia is characterised by a coal mining and energy intensive industrial heritage and is undergoing a transition to exit coal that has significant impacts on its industry, employment and communities. In the context of the changing regulatory context for cohesion policy under the next Multiannual Financial Framework, and the transition pathways of the industrial ecosystems developed by DG GROW, a pilot exercise was undertaken: firstly, to track the key development indicators in the region and, secondly, to determine the extent to which the needs of transitioning ecosystem actors in Silesia were being met by current EU financial resources and programming in the region. The research concluded that, partially as a result of the significant amount of funding directed to Poland and the breadth of its focus, the majority of the challenges were being addressed. Nevertheless, some remaining investment gaps and bottlenecks to territorial and ecosystem development were identified, most significantly, that the transition to renewable and energy sources is occurring too slowly, and rapid investment in renewable energy with a long-term perspective is needed in the region. |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:iptwpa:jrc144056 |
| By: | Luttini, Emiliano Evaristo; Mekonnen, Dawit Kelemework; Mercer-Blackman, Valerie; Sorensen, Bent |
| Abstract: | Commodity-exporting countries face important challenges in shielding their economies from commodity price volatility. In an ideal world, a country would buy and sell foreign assets to insure itself against volatility caused by the destabilizing economic impact of gross domestic product fluctuations over time. The literature on the topic, which has mainly focused on risk sharing across advanced economies, has found a puzzlingly low amount of risk sharing. Using a sample of 110 countries between 1995 and 2019, this paper finds that commodity exporters share 46 percent of their risk as a group internationally, significantly more so than non-commodity exporters, which share about 33 percent of their risk. The greater the volatility of commodity terms of trade, the more a country shares risk internationally. Consequently, energy and metals exporters share risk more than agricultural exporters. Government saving is the main risk-sharing mechanism in commodity-exporting and non-exporting countries, although it is more important for commodity exporters. Commodity-exporting countries are also more likely to smooth gross domestic product fluctuations through net purchases of assets abroad, while non-commodity exporters tend to self-insure through procyclical domestic investment. |
| Date: | 2026–01–14 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11296 |
| By: | Mau, Karsten (RS: GSBE other - not theme-related research, Macro, International & Labour Economics); Vicencio , Antonio (RS: GSBE other - not theme-related research, Macro, International & Labour Economics); Xu, Mingzhi; Zheng, Yawen |
| Abstract: | We develop a method to recover a granular, product-level input-output structure from firm-level customs transactions. Building on an association-rule mining algorithm, we exploit systematic co-occurrences between what firms import and what they export to infer input use in production. Applying the approach to data from several countries, we show that the inferred mappings closely resemble conventional input-output relationships and perform well in external validation exercises. We illustrate the value of these linkages in two applications. First, following China's WTO entry, export growth is accompanied by a pronounced rise in imports of the inputs our mapping associates with those exports. Second, in the 2018-2019 U.S.-China trade war, tariffed Chinese exports to the United States contract, and the shock propagates upstream: China's imports of exposed inputs fall, and third-country suppliers that specialize in those inputs experience the declines in their exports to China, especially if China is a key destination market. Overall, simple pattern recognition tools and micro-level trade data can deliver high-resolution input–output linkages that improve exposure measures and empirical assessments of supply-chain propagation. |
| JEL: | C81 L14 F14 F13 O25 |
| Date: | 2026–01–13 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:umagsb:2026001 |
| By: | Kim Christensen; Roel C. A. Oomen; Roberto Ren\`o |
| Abstract: | The drift burst hypothesis postulates the existence of short-lived locally explosive trends in the price paths of financial assets. The recent U.S. equity and treasury flash crashes can be viewed as two high-profile manifestations of such dynamics, but we argue that drift bursts of varying magnitude are an expected and regular occurrence in financial markets that can arise through established mechanisms of liquidity provision. We show how to build drift bursts into the continuous-time It\^o semimartingale model, elaborate on the conditions required for the process to remain arbitrage-free, and propose a nonparametric test statistic that identifies drift bursts from noisy high-frequency data. We apply the test and demonstrate that drift bursts are a stylized fact of the price dynamics across equities, fixed income, currencies and commodities. Drift bursts occur once a week on average, and the majority of them are accompanied by subsequent price reversion and can thus be regarded as "flash crashes." The reversal is found to be stronger for negative drift bursts with large trading volume, which is consistent with endogenous demand for immediacy during market crashes. |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2601.08974 |
| By: | Luttini, Emiliano; Mekonnen, Dawit; Mercer-Blackman, Valerie; Sørensen, Bent |
| Abstract: | Using world-commodity prices as an instrument, we propose a novel method for decomposing channels of international risk sharing for commodity-exporting countries. We identify the commodity “sector” as the projection of GDP growth on commodity price growth and the non-commodity “sector” as its orthogonal complement. We find that commodity price risk is shared significantly more than other risk in resource-rich countries. Shocks to GDP are smoothed via pro-cyclical savings, especially government savings, and counter-cyclical international factor income. Risk sharing from government savings is stronger at shorter than at longer time horizons. |
| Keywords: | International Development |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea25:361019 |