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This work develops hybrid methods of imaging spectroscopy for open pit mining and examines their feasibility compared with state-of-the-art. The material distribution within a mine face differs in the small scale and within daily assigned extraction segments. These changes can be relevant to subsequent processing steps but are not always visually identifiable prior to the extraction. Misclassifications that cause false allocations of extracted material need to be minimized in order to reduce energy-intensive material re-handling. The use of imaging spectroscopy aspires to the allocation of relevant deposit-specific materials before extraction, and allows for efficient material handling after extraction. The aim of this work is the parameterization of imaging spectroscopy for pit mining applications and the development and evaluation of a workflow for a mine face, ground- based, spectral characterization. In this work, an application-based sensor adaptation is proposed. The sensor complexity is reduced by down-sampling the spectral resolution of the system based on the samples’ spectral characteristics. This was achieved by the evaluation of existing hyperspectral outcrop analysis approaches based on laboratory sample scans from the iron quadrangle in Minas Gerais, Brazil and by the development of a spectral mine face monitoring workflow which was tested for both an operating and an inactive open pit copper mine in the Republic of Cyprus. The workflow presented here is applied to three regional data sets: 1) Iron ore samples from Brazil, (laboratory); 2) Samples and hyperspectral mine face imagery from the copper-gold-pyrite mine Apliki, Republic of Cyprus (laboratory and mine face data); and 3) Samples and hyperspectral mine face imagery from the copper-gold-pyrite deposit Three Hills, Republic of Cyprus (laboratory and mine face data). The hyperspectral laboratory dataset of fifteen Brazilian iron ore samples was used to evaluate different analysis methods and different sensor models. Nineteen commonly used methods to analyze and map hyperspectral data were compared regarding the methods’ resulting data products and the accuracy of the mapping and the analysis computation time. Four of the evaluated methods were determined for subsequent analyses to determine the best-performing algorithms: The spectral angle mapper (SAM), a support vector machine algorithm (SVM), the binary feature fitting algorithm (BFF) and the EnMap geological mapper (EnGeoMap). Next, commercially available imaging spectroscopy sensors were evaluated for their usability in open pit mining conditions. Step-wise downsampling of the data - the reduction of the number of bands with an increase of each band’s bandwidth - was performed to investigate the possible simplification and ruggedization of a sensor without a quality fall-off of the mapping results. The impact of the atmosphere visible in the spectrum between 1300–2010nm was reduced by excluding the spectral range from the data for mapping. This tested the feasibility of the method under realistic open pit data conditions. Thirteen datasets based on the different, downsampled sensors were analyzed with the four predetermined methods. The optimum sensor for spectral mine face material distinction was determined as a VNIR-SWIR sensor with 40nm bandwidths in the VNIR and 15nm bandwidths in the SWIR spectral range and excluding the atmospherically impacted bands. The Apliki mine sample dataset was used for the application of the found optimal analyses and sensors. Thirty-six samples were analyzed geochemically and mineralogically. The sample spectra were compiled to two spectral libraries, both distinguishing between seven different geochemical-spectral clusters. The reflectance dataset was downsampled to five different sensors. The five different datasets were mapped with the SAM, BFF and SVM method achieving mapping accuracies of 85-72%, 85-76% and 57-46% respectively. One mine face scan of Apliki was used for the application of the developed workflow. The mapping results were validated against the geochemistry and mineralogy of thirty-six documented field sampling points and a zonation map of the mine face which is based on sixty-six samples and field mapping. The mine face was analyzed with SAM and BFF. The analysis maps were visualized on top of a Structure-from-Motion derived 3D model of the open pit. The mapped geological units and zones correlate well with the expected zonation of the mine face. The third set of hyperspectral imagery from Three Hills was available for applying the fully-developed workflow. Geochemical sample analyses and laboratory spectral data of fifteen different samples from the Three Hills mine, Republic of Cyprus, were used to analyse a downsampled mine face scan of the open pit. Here, areas of low, medium and high ore content were identified. The developed workflow is successfully applied to the open pit mines Apliki and Three Hills and the spectral maps reflect the prevailing geological conditions. This work leads through the acquisition, preparation and processing of imaging spectroscopy data, the optimum choice of analysis methodology, and the utilization of simplified, robust sensors that meet the requirements of open pit mining conditions. It accentuates the importance of a site-specific and deposit-specific spectral library for the mine face analysis and underlines the need for geological and spectral analysis experts to successfully implement imaging spectroscopy in the field of open pit mining. In dieser Dissertation wird die Machbarkeit und Anwendung moderner und eines eigen entwickelten Hybridverfahrens in der bildgebenden Spektroskopie für den Tagebau untersucht. Die Materialverteilung innerhalb einer Abbaufront unterscheidet sich oft innerhalb eines kleinen Maßstabs und variiert zudem innerhalb täglich zugeordneter Abbausegmente. Diese Veränderungen können für nachfolgende Verarbeitungsschritte relevant sein, sind aber vor dem Abbau nicht immer visuell erkennbar. Falsche Klassifizierungen des Materials führen zu Fehlverteilungen des abgebauten Materials, die minimiert werden müssen, um den energie-intensiven Materialtransport zu reduzieren. Mit Hilfe der bildgebenden Spektroskopie wird angestrebt, relevante Lagerstättenspezifische Materialien vor der Extraktion korrekt zuzuordnen und ein effizientes Materialhandling nach der Extraktion zu ermöglichen. Ziel dieser Arbeit ist die Parametrisierung der bildgebenden Spektroskopie für den Bergbau und die Entwicklung und Evaluierung eines Workflows zur spektralen Charakterisierung von offenem Bergbau mittels bodengebundener Sensorik. Dies wurde durch die Evaluierung bestehender Ansätze zur hyperspektralen Aufschlussanalyse erreicht, die auf Grundlage von Laborscans von Proben aus dem Eisernen Vierecks in Minas Gerais, Brasilien, durchgeführt wurde. Eine spektralen Abbaufrontanalyse wurde mithilfe von Daten eines aktiven und eines inaktiven Kupfer-Tagebaus in der Republik Zypern entwickelt. Der in dieser Arbeit vorgestellte Arbeitsablauf wird auf drei regionale Datensätze angewandt: 1) Eisenerzproben aus Brasilien (Labordaten); 2) Proben und hyperspektrale bildgebende Daten der Abbaufront aus dem Kupfer-Gold-Pyrit-Tagebau Apliki, Republik Zypern (Labor- und Abbaufrontdaten); und 3) Proben und hyperspektrale bildgebende Daten der Abbaufront aus der Kupfer-Gold-Pyrit-Lagerstätte Three Hills, Republik Zypern (Labor- und Abbaufrontdaten). Der hyperspektrale Labordatensatz von fünfzehn brasilianischen Eisenerzproben wurde zur Evaluierung verschiedener Analysemethoden und verschiedener Sensormodelle verwendet. Neunzehn gebräuchliche Methoden zur Analyse und Kartierung hyperspektraler Daten wurden im Hinblick auf ihre resultierenden Datenprodukte, die Genauigkeit der Kartierung und die Berechnungszeit der Analyse verglichen. Vier der evaluierten Methoden wurden für nachfolgende Analysen bestimmt: Der Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM), ein Support Vector Machine Algorithmus (SVM), der Binary Feature Fitting Algorithmus (BFF) und der EnMap Geological Mapper (EnGeoMap). Als nächstes wurden kommerziell erhältliche bildgebende Spektroskopiesensoren auf ihre Verwendbarkeit unter Tagebaubedingungen evaluiert. Ein schrittweises Reduzieren der Datenkomplexität, das sog. “downsampling” (die Verringerung der Anzahl der Bänder und gleichzeitige Erhöhung der Bandbreite jedes Bandes), wurde durchgeführt, um eine Vereinfachung der Sensorkomplexität ohne Qualitätseinbußen der Kartierungsergebnisse zu untersuchen. Der Einfluss der Atmosphäre, die im Spektrum zwischen 1300-2010nm sichtbar ist, wurde reduziert, indem der Spektralbereich aus den Daten für die Kartierung ausgeschlossen wurde. Dadurch wurde die Durchführbarkeit der Methode unter realistischen Tagebaubedingungen getestet. Dreizehn Datensätze, die auf den verschiedenen Sensoren basierten, wurden mit den vier vorher benannten Methoden analysiert. Der optimale Sensor für die spektrale Unterscheidung von Abbaufrontmaterial wurde als VNIR-SWIR-Sensor mit 40nm Bandbreite im VNIR- und 15nm Bandbreite im SWIR-Spektralbereich bestimmt, der atmosphärisch beeinflusste Spektralbereich wurde ausgeschlossen. Nun wurde der Datensatz von der Mine in Apliki verwendet, um die vorher bestimmten Analysen und Sensoren anzuwenden. Sechsunddreißig Proben wurden geochemisch und mineralogisch analysiert. Die Probenspektren wurden zu zwei Spektralbibliotheken zusammengestellt, die beide zwischen sieben verschiedenen geochemisch-spektralen Clustern unterscheiden. Die Reflexionsdaten wurden auf fünf verschiedene Sensoren heruntergerechnet. Diese fünf verschiedenen Datensätze wurden mit der SAM-, BFF- und SVM-Methode kartiert, wobei entsprechende Kartierungsgenauigkeiten von 85-72%, 85-76% bzw. 57-46% erreicht wurden. Ein Scan der Abbaufront von Apliki wurde verwendet, um den entwickelten Arbeitsablauf auf Daten unter realistische Bedingungen anzuwenden. Die Kartierungsergebnisse wurden auf der Grundlage der Feldbeprobung und einer geologischen Zonierungskarte der Abbaufront validiert. Die Abbaufront wurde mit SAM und BFF analysiert und die Analysekarten wurden auf einem von „Structure-from-Motion“ abgeleiteten 3D-Modell des Tagebaus visualisiert. Die kartographierten geologischen Einheiten und Zonen korrelierten gut mit der erwarteten Zonierung der Abbaufront. Ein dritter Datensatz stand für die Anwendung des entwickelten Arbeitsablaufs zur Verfügung. Geochemische Probenanalysen und Laborspektraldaten von fünfzehn verschiedenen Proben aus dem offenen Tagebau Three Hills in der Republik Zypern wurden zur Analyse eines Datensatzes der Abbaufron des Tagebaus verwendet. Dabei wurden Bereiche mit niedrigem, mittlerem und hohem Erzgehalt identifiziert. Der in der Arbeit entwickelte Arbeitsablauf konnte erfolgreich für die offenen Tagebaue Apliki und Three Hills angewandt werden. Die errechneten Spektralgeologischen Karten stellen die örtliche geologische Situation korrekt dar. Der entwickelte Arbeitsablauf erläutert die Erfassung, Aufbereitung und Verarbeitung von Daten aus der bildgebenden Spektroskopie und beschreibt die Wahl der Analysemethodik sowie die Verwendung robuster Sensoren, die den Anforderungen der Tagebaubedingungen entsprechen. Sie hebt die Bedeutung einer standort- und lagerstättenspezifischen Spektralbibliothek für die Analyse von Abbaufronten hervor und unterstreicht die nötige Einbindung von Experten im Bereich der Geologie und der Spektralanalyse für eine erfolgreiche Implementierung der bildgebenden Spektroskopie im Kontext des Abbaus von Material in offenen Tagebauten.

This paper examines the effect of natural resources on the level of democracy in a set of countries. The main model is a fixed effects regression model, where the focus is on within-country variation over time. The effect of different resources is investigated, namely the effect of oil, diamonds and agriculture. Furthermore, a distinction is made between two broad types of resources, diffuse and point resources, to explore whether the effect on democracy is similar or different. Criticism in existing literature on the presence of the resource curse is taken into account. Production data on natural resources is used and not the common variable ‘resource exports-over-GDP’, the latter being flawed. A possible endogeneity problem is taken into account, as well as the persistence of democracy over time. I find evidence for a resource curse of oil on democracy. It is present in different model specifications, such as models with either fixed effects or a lagged dependent variable. There only seems to be very weak evidence for a negative effect of point resources on democracy, compared to the effect of diffuse resources. It is argued that this might be due to the geographic concentration of these types of resources, which enables governments and elite groups to capture resource rents.

The paper studies the long-run effects of shocks to resource rents on the economy using a structural vector error correction model for 37 developing countries. First, the long-run relations involving resource rents and the economy differ for resource importers and exporters. Second, there is an indirect effect from resource rents to output through public capital accumulation for resource exporters. third, although resource rents have a positive long-run impact on output, good public investment management is required for resource rents to improve non-resource output.

Do local populations benefit from resource booms? How strong are market linkages between the mining sector and the regional economy? This paper exploits exogenous variation in mine-level production volumes generated by the recent copper boom in Zambia to shed light on these questions. Using a novel dataset, I find robust evidence that an increase in local copper production improves living standards in the surroundings of the mines even for households not directy employed in the mining sector: a 10% increase in constituency-level copper output is associated with a 2% increase in real household expenditure; positive effects on housing conditions, consumer durable ownership and child health are of similar magnitude. The positive spill-overs extend to the rural hinterland of mining cities, neighboring constituencies, and constituencies to the copper transportation route. Additionally,I identify boom-induced changes in the demand for servics and agricultural products as key channels through which the urban and rural populations benefit from the mine expansions. Since the boom failed to generate fiscal revenues, these effects can be interpreted as the result of the mines' backward linkages. Taken together, these findings highlight the welfare potential of local procurement policies in resource rich developing countries.

We consider two models of economic growth with exhaustible natural resources, exogenous technical progress and agents heterogeneous in their time preferences. In the first model we assume private ownership of natural resources. We show that every competitive equilibrium in this model converges to a balanced-growth equilibrium. The long-run extraction rate and the rate of growth are determined by the discount factor of the most patient agents. The second model assumes public ownership of natural resources. The resource revenue is equally distributed among agents, who choose the resource extraction rate by voting. We define an intertemporal voting equilibrium and show that it also converges to a balanced-growth equilibrium. The long-run voting equilibrium extraction rate and the rate of growth are determined by the median discount factor. Our results suggest that, other things being equal, the growth rate in the case of private ownership is higher than that of public ownership if the most patient agents do not constitute the majority in population; otherwise there is no difference in the growth rates between the two regimes. However, in the long run private ownership leads to a higher level of inequality than public ownership. If we take into account the detrimental effect of inequality on economic growth, then the public property regime will likely result in a higher long-run rate of growth compared to the private property regime.

We build a two-sector dynamic general equilibrium model with one-sided substitutability between fossil carbon and biocarbon. One shock only, the discovery of the technology to use fossil fuels, leads to a transition from an initial pre-industrial phase to three following phases: a pure fossil carbon phase, a mixed fossil and biocarbon phase and an absorbing biocarbon phase. The increased competition for biocarbon during phase 3 and 4 leads to increasing food prices. We provide closed form expressions for this price increase. Our calibration leads to a price increase of 40% if capital and labor are allowed to move to the biocarbon sector. Otherwise, the price increase is much higher. We also use the model to analyze the consequences of restrictions on using biocarbon as fuel. We show that such restrictions can lead to a substantially slower global warming due to an endogenous slowdown of fossil fuel extraction.

Economic stability is dependent on the effective functioning and resilience of energy systems. Resilience is a term used across all research disciplines and in everyday discourse. As a concept it purports to serve as a useful indicator of sustainability and robustness, but it has proved difficult to measure. Ecological resilience, psychological resilience, risk management and energy security are all fields of research in which measures of the ability to respond to the unexpected are sought. The goal is to build adaptive capacity but quite different methods have been developed to achieve this end. Research on energy security, in particular, has focused on the security of oil supplies, not resilience or the adaptive capacity of the energy system or the role that renewable energy plays in building such capacity. This paper discusses how different disciplines seek to measure and build resilience and explores its connection with the state or quality of a system’s adaptive capacity. When the parameters of redundancy and diversity are present, resilience is enhanced. For this reason, in energy systems we must understand the size and scope of the key parameters required to facilitate the development of adaptive capacity and to build resilience that can enhance economic stability.

The energy transition from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources has important consequences for technological change and resource extraction. We examine these consequences by incorporating a nonrenewable resource and an alternative energy source in a market economy model of endogenous growth through expanding varieties. During the energy transition, technological progress is nonmonotonic over time: It declines initially, starts increasing when the economy approaches the regime shift, and jumps down once the resource stock is exhausted. A moment of peak-oil does no longer necessarily occur, and simultaneous use of the resource and the alternative energy source will take place if the return to innovation becomes too low. Subsidies to research and development (R&D) and to renewables production speed up the energy transition, whereas a tax on fossil fuels postpones the switch to renewable energy.

International audience; Over the past decade, the rapid increase in shale gas and shale oil production in the United States has profoundly changed energy markets in North America, and has led to a significant decrease in American natural gas prices. The possible existence of large shale deposits in continental Europe, mainly in France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany, has fostered speculation on whether the U.S. shale revolution could be duplicated in Europe. However, a number of uncertainties, notably geological, technological, regulatory, and relating to public acceptance make this possibility unclear. We present a techno-economic model of shale gas production amenable to direct estimation on historical production data to analyze the main determinants of the profitability of shale wells and plays. We contribute an in-depth analysis of an extensive production dataset covering 40,000 wells and accounting for nearly 90% of shale gas production in the six main plays of the continental United States from 2004 to 2014. We combine this analysis with a discussion of the main differences between the American and European contexts to calibrate our model and conduct Monte-Carlo simulations. This enables us to estimate the distribution of breakeven prices for shale gas extraction in continental Europe. We find a median gross breakeven price before taxes and royalties of $10.1 per MMBtu. This would make extraction unprofitable in Europe in the current natural gas price environment, with < 47% of the well distribution reaching breakeven at the mean 2011–2016 price. Sensitivity analysis reveals that the breakeven price is most sensitive to initial production rate, drilling and completion costs, and decline rates. We also find that the economic outlook would be slightly better if the productivity of European shale gas plays was comparable to that of U.S. plays of similar depth, but not significantly so. We conclude that under assumptions calibrated on existing shale gas production data, it is unlikely that the U.S. shale revolution can be duplicated in continental Europe.

Whether it is fair to characterize natural resource wealth as a curse is still debated. Most of the evidence derives from cross-country analyses, providing cases both for and against a potential resource curse. Scholars are increasingly turning to within-country evidence to deepen our understanding of the potential drivers, and outcomes, of resource wealth effects. Moving away from cross-country studies offers new perspectives on the resource curse debate and can help overcome concerns regarding endogeneity. Therefore, scholars are leveraging datasets that provide greater disaggregation of economic responses and exogenous identification of impacts. This article surveys the literature on these studies of local and regional effects of natural resource extraction. We discuss data availability and quality, recent advances in methodological tools, and the main findings of several research areas. These areas include the direct impact of natural resource production on local labor markets and welfare, the effects of government spending channels resulting from mining revenue, and regional spillovers. Finally, we take stock of the state of the literature and provide suggestions for future research.

A nonrenewable resource extraction model is embedded within a lake model of industry-specific employment, where flows to (from) employment from (to) unemployment depend on the attachment (separation) rate. The attachment and separation rates vary with resource extraction, and the results, driven by the rate of extraction and the remaining resource stock, indicate that changes in the stationary employment level can be positive, negative, or zero. There is a range where the separation rate is decreasing (increasing) and the attachment rate is increasing (decreasing), and the change in employment is determined by the combined effect of these changes. Using data on coal production and employment in the U.S. as a guide, simple calculations provide a range of years beyond 2013 when it is expected that peak employment will be reached in the Marcellus Shale, and the results suggest that employment gains will likely continue for at least a decade.

The energy-related issues have become of paramount importance in recent years due to the exhaustion of fossil fuel resources, their price variations and political dependence on nations with role of energy providers. In addition, the changing in climate conditions requires reduction emissions of greenhouse gases. Therefore, this paper proposes and assesses the novel idea of using constructions as a unit of analysis for corpus-based discourse analysis in the energy field. This article will use a standard method in linguistics to quantitatively investigate academic writings from both a lexical and a stylistic perspective. The present research paper aims to add to the knowledge about energy issues by conducting a data-driven analysis of economic academic discourse, through three periods of time and using secondary data analysis. The findings suggest the evolution of the energy sector throughout time and they gave interesting and different insights into the content of the discourses and enabled better comparison of corpora.

This paper investigates the impact of historical crude oil-price fluctuation on diverse economies. It employs the use of Structural Vector Autoregressive (SVAR) and Panel Vector Autoregressive (PVAR) methodologies as innovative paths of investigating oil-shock association. While evidence of linear and non-linear shock specifications hold for developed economies within the SVAR specification, growth patterns for emerging counterpart are only defined by the linear shock. The asymmetric behaviour of growth response along shock specifications and development is predisposed to two main channels: First is the differential systemic and institutional framework in place across economies, making shock vulnerabilities differ. Secondly, identification restrictions imposed within SVAR methodology is perceived to have overruled conditions consistent with the non-linear shock model. Positive oil-price shocks benefits accrue to the global community through investment while negative oil-price shocks are transmitted through interest rate triggered trade cut-backs.

Intellectual capital is a collaboration and mutual learning within and between undertakings which ensures their long-term successful business association. Intellectual capital is an attempt assigning financial value of knowledge within a particular economic entity. This paper will present ways of measuring intellectual capital, ie. valorization techniques of intangible assets. The increased interest in the measurement of intangible assets is the result of increasing enterprise value which is not shown in the accounting statements and therefore creates the wrong information . The biggest difference between market and book value recorded just high-tech enterprises and industries where intensive knowledge is invested in intangible assets such as research and development and brand. Therefore, one of the main challenges for management is creating conditions for successful generation of intangible value ( knowledge , services , experience , benefits , speed, quality and reputation ) and its transformation into tangible forms ( income , profits , value added, stocks , market value ).

The dramatic increase in oil and gas production from shale formations has led to an intense interest in its impact on local area economies. Exploration, drilling and extraction are associated with direct increases in employment and income in the energy industry, but little is known about the impacts on other parts of local economies. Increased energy sector employment and income can have positive spillover effects through increased purchases of intermediate goods and induced local spending. Negative spillover effects can occur through rising local factor and goods prices and adverse effects on the local area quality of life. Therefore, this paper examines the net economic impacts of oil and gas production from shale formations for key shale oil and gas producing areas in Arkansas, North Dakota and Pennsylvania. The synthetic control method (Abadie and Gardeazabal, 2003; Abadie et al., 2010) is used to establish a baseline projection for the local economies in the absence of increased energy development, allowing for estimation of the net regional economic effects of increased shale oil and gas production.

Water quality in China has seriously deteriorated in recent years. However, very few valuation studies have been conducted to estimate the monetary values associated with water quality changes. As a result, the decision makers can hardly make rational choices with regard to investments in water quality improvement. This paper presents a valuation study conducted in Dali, Yunnan Province, which aims to estimate the total economic value of improving the water quality of Erhai Lake by one grade level. Both the contingent valuation method and the benefit transfer approach are employed in this study. The contingent valuation estimation strategy reveals that, on average, a household located in Dali is willing to pay about 27 yuan per month continuously for 5 years for the water quality improvement, equivalent to 1.7% of the household monthly income. The elasticity of willingness-to-pay with respect to income is estimated to be 0.28. The internal rate of economic return of the proposed pollution control project is estimated to be 13%. The benefit transfer exercise produces a similar estimation on willingness to pay (WTP) values, with a difference of less than 2% compared with the contingent valuation approach. The results indicate the potential reliability of using the benefit transfer approach for valuation estimations in Chinese provinces.

More than 40% of US corn is now used to produce biofuels, which are used as substitutes for gasoline in transportation. Biofuels have been blamed universally for recent increases in world food prices. Many studies have shown that these energy mandates in the US and EU may have a large (30-60%) impact on food prices. In this paper we use a partial equilibrium framework to show that demand-side effects - in the form of population growth and income-driven preferences for meat and dairy products rather than cereals - may play as much of a role in raising food prices as biofuel policy. By specifying a Ricardian model with a differential land quality, we find that a significant amount of new land will be converted to farming which is likely to cause a modest increase in food prices. However, biofuels may increase aggregate world carbon emissions, due to leakage from lower oil prices and conversion of pasture and forest land for farming.

This paper documents the channels through which commodity price volatility can affect resource intensive industries’ investment decisions, production levels and profitability. Over the very long run, the Canadian forestry sector was not immune from the negative effects of commodity price volatility. However, the long run averages mask dynamic and asymmetric patterns in the sector’s responses to price volatility. The supply of investment funds from formal-external sources was suppressed during episodes of high and rising commodity price volatility, but insensitive to low and falling volatility. These effects weakened as the economy matured. The accumulation of reproducible and natural capital was affected by commodity price volatility through an investment supply channel that was also asymmetric, but in this case, the effect was strongest during low and falling volatility. These results show how a maturing economy with diversified investment opportunities can become increasingly immune from the negative effects of commodity price volatility.

Purpose – The paper aims to examine the coexistence of formal and informal resource sectors in resource-dependent economies, whose production depends on an exhaustible (e.g. minerals) and a renewable resource stock (e.g. forest), respectively. It then examines the implications of declining mineral stocks on public revenues, labour movements between sectors, and economic growth in an attempt to elucidate the poor economic performance of many mineral-dependent countries. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a theoretical model that describes the coexistence of a formal and informal resource-dependent sector, where individuals can direct their work effort. It then assesses how declining mineral stocks influence labour mobility across sectors and environmental degradation. Findings – Decreasing mineral stocks induce a relocation of labour towards informal production and deprive local authorities from public revenues collected within the formal economy. This constrains the ability to improve infrastructure and welfare over time and simultaneously imposes pressure on the local environment. Originality/value – The paper provides a novel theoretical mechanism that attempts to elucidate the “resource curse”, i.e. the poor economic performance of many mineral-rich economies. It purposely explores the implications of a coexistence of formal and informal resource activities on economic development for resource-dependent economies, in order to obtain new insights into this direction.

The principles of how best to manage the various components of national wealth are outlined, where the permanent income hypothesis, the Hotelling rule, and the Hartwick rule play a prominent role. As far as managing natural resource wealth is concerned, a case is made to use an intergenerational sovereign wealth fund to smooth consumption across generations, a liquidity fund for the precautionary buffers to deal with commodity price volatility, and an investment fund to park part of the windfall until the country is ready to absorb extra spending on domestic investment. Capital scarcity implies that a positive part of the windfall should be spent on domestic investment. The conclusions highlight the political economy problems that will have to be tackled with these normative proposals for managing wealth. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press.

This paper investigates the conflicts which are resulted from coal tax reform in China from economic and public policy perspectives. An analytical framework involving actors, values, interests and institution has been applied. China’s central government eagers to achieve fiscal revenue increase, environmental protection and energy conversation goals by a good governance of coal system. As a traditional and feasible policy instrument, taxation is regarded for dealing with energy issues in politics and governance. However, coal tax reform proposal has induced many controversies in China. The causes of that include value conflicts of all actors, competing interests of all parties and institutional barriers of economic, politics and legislation. Therefore, the government cannot regulate coal issues only through taxation. The case reveals that good governance on coal cannot be achieved only by economic tools as the coal system contains so high stake and involves so many players.

Business intelligence and knowledge management seems to gain the attention of the society regarding the benefits that brings to it when this two domains are considered as a whole. The advantage of using business intelligence in order to take decisions and bring innovation to the business, are convincing more and more entrepreneurs to implement this solution. The challenge in managing and using the knowledge that the business intelligence offers to the business, comes with the integration of the information with state administrative structures datas that have to be available to business clusters in order to improve their decisional process. In our paper, we demonstrate the benefits of using business intelligence in Romanian state administrative structures underlying the way that this adoption would support the activity of innovative and creative clusters.

The following paper aims at analyzing the financing by the European Union of the climate change limitation and mitigation activities. The general objectives of the activities directed towards reducing and combating climate change, analyzed on the two directions of action, namely the mitigation of the phenomenon, and the adaptation to climate change, are exposed. The financing action by the EU in order to combat climate change at the international level, both the fast start financing, and medium and long term financing, together with the Union's objectives, the sources of financing and the transparence of the decisions implementation are also presented.

The recent developments bring US to a leading natural gas and oil producer position. The attempts in last 20 years to bring new horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies together have developed a success in shale gas and oil production in US; the production volumes has reached to a position to redefine the market. Last estimations are bringing more information about the shale capacities of the major basins of the world. However, the estimates are based on a wide range of assumptions and consequently their results vary in a large scale. In any case, these developments have crucial economic, political and geopolitical consequences on the energy market, petroleum producer and consumer countries and regions. Despite the wide range of ambiguity of the estimated size of the resources, the estimations show US and North America has one of the biggest potential, already turning technology into the giant production numbers. Some of the estimations allege so big numbers can even mean to a new world order. The asymmetric nature of the potential, can also be said, increases some of the expected impacts too. In this study, basically, we want to supply an initial solid and economical evaluation to this ambiguity. We are trying to shape a frame for the new energy potential and to put it in a place in the current practice of the world. Secondly, in this context, we are underlying here some of the possible economic and geopolitical consequences each of which can constitute a subject of deeper study.

We estimate the impact of geo-located mining concessions on the number of conflict events recorded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1997 and 2007. Instrumenting the variable of interest with historical concessions interacted with changes in international prices of minerals, we unveil an ecological fallacy: whereas concessions have no effect on the number of conflicts at the territory level (lowest administrative unit), they do foster violence at the district level (higher administrative unit). We develop and validate empirically a theoretical model where the incentives of armed groups to exploit and protect mineral resources explain our empirical findings. © Oxford University Press 2013. All rights reserved. ispartof: OXFORD ECONOMIC PAPERS-NEW SERIES vol:66 issue:3 pages:721-749 ispartof: location:Wageningen University, Wageningen status: published

This study examines the factors which influence Economic Growth, measure the growth rate of total factor productivity (TFP) and examine the relationship between TFP, nonrenewable energy consumption and renewable energy consumption to economic growth in oil producing African countries. An augmented production function is employed to estimate the TFP. In addition, a panel cointegration and a fixed effect model in a Pooled least squares are used to examine the relationship among the variables. The findings suggest that the growth rate of total factor productivity is negative. The panel estimations indicate a significant relationship between economic growth, non-renewable energy consumption, renewable energy consumption, capital and human capital development. The Granger causality test indicates that there is a unidirectional causality from non-renewable energy to growth but bidirectional causality between renewable energy and growth in the long run. The study recommends investment in commercial sources of renewable energy to boost energy supply and investment in factors that will enhance TFP growth.

The formation of R&D consortia can provide enterprises with many competitive advantages and allow them to achieve economies of scale. Therefore, R&D consortia are an important way of enhancing technical capacity, reducing cost and risk, and maintaining the competitive advantages of enterprises. This study selected 489 consortia with 1,668 participating enterprises from 14,922 government-subsidized enterprises participating in the six projects of participation in R&D consortia during the period 2000-2011. The research focus was to explore the motivation and effectiveness of enterprise participation in consortia using 14 variables for internal and external factors. The study found that these internal and external factors were significantly and positively correlated with the formation of the R&D consortia. Moreover, after participating in R&D consortia, the capital, turnover, number of employees, R&D talent, and new products and services of these enterprises all increased.

Concerns about the role of energy consumption in global warming have led to policy designs that seek to reduce fossil fuel consumption or find a less polluting alternative especiallyfor the transport sector. This study seeks to estimate the elasticities of price, income, education and technology on transport gasoline demand sector inGhana. The Structural Time Series Model reports a short-run price and income elasticities of -0.0088 and 0.713. Total factor productivity is -0.408 whilstthe elasticity for education is 2.33. In the long run, the reported price and income elasticities are -0.065 and 5.129 respectively. The long run elasticityfor productivity is -2.935. The study recommends that in order to enhanceefficiency in gasoline consumption in the transport sector, there should beinvestment in productivity.

We provide a general condition under which consumption can be sustained indefinitely bounded away from zero in the continuous time Dasgupta-Heal-Solow-Stiglitz model, by letting augmentable capital substitute for a non-renewable resource. The assumptions made on the production function are mild, thus generalizing previous work. By showing that Hartwick's rule minimizes the required resource input per unit of capital accumulation, and integrating the required resource input with respect to capital, we obtain a complete technological characterization without reference to the time path. We also use the characterization result to establish general existence of a maximin path. © 2013 Elsevier Inc.

The purpose of the present paper is to demonstrate the usefulness of Green National Accounting by drawing out some interesting insights from the Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounts recently elaborated by the Institute for Advanced Development Studies for the case of Bolivia. The paper uses the Green National Accounts to show the importance of environmental inputs in 7 different productive sectors and compares the corresponding natural resource rents to the level of producer taxes in each sector. The paper also analyses the evolution of total productive capital, in order to judge whether Bolivia’s current development model can be considered sustainable. The paper finished with recommendations about interesting extensions that can be made to the Green National Accounts.

The topic dealt with in the paper is very timely and has assumed major importance from the viewpoint of development of research into economies based on sustainable development and application of research findings in specific solutions in the economy. The paper postulates that innovation is a fundamental and necessary instrument for implementing sustainable development throughout the whole economy. In order to confirm the thesis, first the paper attempts to identify the role of innovation in various areas of the economy. Secondly, it identifies the sources of innovation and areas of the economy which most require new innovative solutions. The study is based on literature, both domestic and foreign. The author analyses theoretical and empirical publications available on the market. Older publications turned out to be necessary and helpful in describing the evolution of the approach to sustainable development of the economy from a historical point of view. Newer works provide a basis for the compilation of a vast majority of the paper. The paper is a preliminary step in a more detailed research into various aspects of an economy based on sustainable development.

The emergence of the concept of sustainable development and thus led to increased interest in environmental issues (environmental). Sustainable development of products and processes involves reaching requirements of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own requirements. Practice eco-design aims to improve the product to determine a life cycle energy savings, waste, radiation and toxins. Sustainable product design must, however, include ecological service concepts such as using associated products, leasing ambient and sharing. Not neglected ethical and social issues that arise in the process of sustainable design. Sustainable development aimed at combining the long term, in the necessity of production and consumption, on one hand and a favorable environment for the protection of life, on the other hand. This philosophy also marks the transition from the preventive remedies. The whole economic activity of an organization is reflected on the environment but through eco-conscious management that can manage the actions that have or may have an effect on the environment. Its purpose is to protect natural resources, reduce pollution and environmental risks and preserving the health of employees and the surrounding population.

Angesichts stark wachsender Nachfrage nach Rohstoffen, insbesondere vonseiten der aufstrebenden Schwellenländer und entsprechend steigender Rohstoffpreise, richtet sich der Blick zunehmend auf die Tiefsee als enorme noch weitgehend unerschlossene Quelle reichhaltiger Rohstoffvorkommen. Der KZK-Beitrag gibt einen Überblick über die Lagerstätten, die Erkundung und die geplante Erschließung der Tiefseeressourcen und weist auf die Risiken eines Ressourcenabbaus in der Tiefsee hin.

This paper shows how food safety, food security and environmental risks associated with agriculture can be alleviated through sustainable agriculture. Today, most of the countries are arguably food insecure. Developed countries rely mostly on industrial agriculture which has led to increasing monocropping and imported food while developing countries are extremely vulnerable to food price inflation. The risks associated with food insecurity are political and economic instability. Modern industrial agriculture mindset assumes the reality of substitution between land and external chemicals and management systems that resulted in overvalued land and undervalued social costs of the negative externalities with the associated environmental risks of polluted water, acid rain and degraded soil. The globalization of the food production and the intensification of food trade enhance the risks associated with food safety. Food consumption all over the world is a mixture of imported agricultural products and domestic products making difficult to find the contamination source in case of a food scare. The development of agriculture is an essential way to raise national income and improve the welfare of rural dwellers whether a developing country or a developed country. The paper makes the case that sustainable agriculture is the best method for agricultural development with the largest opportunity for economic development and reduction or alleviation of environmental, food security and food safety risks.

Article is intended to describe the general aspects of migration, labor migration from Romania and how this phenomenon affects the labor market at national level. The activities undertaken in this article reveal a diagnosis of the current situation and a forecast of future trends of labor migration, study on the situation of Romanians abroad, the perception of foreigners on Romanians. The developments seen in the phenomenon of labor migration easily highlight the way liberal democracies work and how European development process, even the transformation of immigration policy, adaptability and openness to change, questionable character and difficulties encountered along the way.

Welche Chancen und Risiken ergeben sich aus der Schiefergasförderung in Europa und speziell in Deutschland? Nach Ansicht von Felix Müsgens, Brandenburgische Technische Universität Cottbus-Senftenberg, und Andreas Seeliger, Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg Mosbach, sollte die skeptische Haltung gegenüber einer einheimischen Shale-Gas-Förderung überprüft und die Wiederbelebung der deutschen Gasförderindustrie in Betracht gezogen werden. Kirsten Westphal, Stiftung Politik und Wissenschaft, Berlin, analysiert die Folgen des US-Schiefergasbooms. Die USA können nicht nur rein rechnerisch energieunabhängig werden, der Schiefergasboom fördert auch die geopolitische Entwicklung der Vereinigten Staaten in Richtung Asien. Stefan Ladage, Harald Andruleit und Michael Kosinowski, Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe (BGR), Hannover, betrachten die Schiefergasvorkommen in Deutschland. Inwieweit Schiefergas gefördert werden kann und in welchem Umfang sei zurzeit noch nicht absehbar.

This paper analyzes the Thai petroleum fiscal regimes, so called Thailand I and Thailand III, under the concession system for granting petroleum exploration and production rights. The analytical issues include the sharing of benefit between the government and concessionaires, assurance of the government’s share of the profits, and the incentive for entrepreneurs to invest and generate efficient operation. The findings reveal that the Thai petroleum regimes are not flexible because only one set of fiscal instruments is applied. The regimes cannot be adjusted to either the context of project fields and operation or the uncertainty of petroleum price. However, the regimes could generate sufficient sharing of benefit although the share of government cannot be firmly assured. The Thai government revenue is based only on the royalty and petroleum income tax; it does not receive as much a share of the profit as the neighboring countries have been receiving under their sharing systems, which is based on production and the project contracts granted according to types of petroleum and exploration as well as production areas. The Thai petroleum regimes, however, give enough incentive to investors. If the Thai government continues the concession system, it should consider applying an additional fiscal instrument, i.e. “supplementary income tax” to increase government revenue.

This paper provides an analytic review of the upstream aspects of the exploitation of natural resources: the assignment of ownership rights, taxation, the discovery process, extraction, renewability, and clean-up. It sets these issues within the principal-agent framework. It proposes that the present common system whereby governments sell extraction rights prior to discovery through signature bonuses is likely to be socially costly, since the sale of rights occurs at a stage where irreducible risks generate a severe discount. It also proposes that the present common system whereby governments sell extraction rights by means of negotiated deals might disadvantage governments relative to more transparent and competitive systems such as auctions. While the paper is primarily analytic, it also briefly reviews African experience, suggesting that both high commodity prices and the low value of discovered assets per hectare imply major opportunities.

This paper explores the choices faced by developing country governments that have received substantial revenues from natural resources. The economic principles underlying the choices between consumption, domestic investment, and the accumulation of foreign assets are analysed. The priority should be to use revenues to promote growth and investment in the domestic economy and thereby put consumption on a rapid growth path, although absorptive capacity may constrain the scope for doing this in the short run. Foreign asset accumulation should be used primarily to smooth volatility, rather than to build up a long-term sovereign wealth fund. Trade-offs between private and public spending channels are examined from both an economic and political economy standpoint.

This document studies the economic effect of windfall gains by examining a Peruvian natural experiment. The Camisea Fund for Socioeconomic Development (FOCAM) is an inter-governmental fiscal transfer scheme that allocates natural gas royalties generated by the Camisea Gas Project to eligible subnational governments. We exploit the rules governing FOCAM allocation to identify the effect of the transfers on municipal accounts, local infrastructure, and economic development. Using a newly constructed district- level dataset for the years 2005 and 2012, we find evidence of positive impacts on municipal capital expenditures and local infrastructure. However, we also find evidence of a negative impact on municipal current expenditures. More specifically, we find that municipalities with low absorptive capacity coped with the increased administrative burden of FOCAM transfers by reallocating administrative effort toward (away from) executing capital (current) expenditures.

This paper examines the Portuguese electricity-supply-sector evolution within the EU-27 and its impact on atmospheric emissions. Using a dataset of SO2, NOx, CO2 and particulates emissions for Portuguese thermoelectricity plants between 1990 and 2008, the performed panel data model shows emissions to be a positive function of fossil fuel combustible use. Nevertheless, these results denote a more “impressive” correlation per GWh generated than in other EU countries. They also indicate that only SO2 emissions are a negative function of liberalization, which may be explained by the market power of the incumbent that does not feel threatened to adopt environmental improvements., peer-reviewed

We introduce endogenous directed technical change into numerical integrated climate and development policy assessment. We distinguish expenditures on innovation (R&D) and imitation (international technology spillovers) and consider the role of capital investment in creating and implementing new technologies. Our main contribution is to calibrate and numerically solve the model and to examine the model’s sensitivity. As an application, we assess a carbon budget-based climate policy and vary the beginning of energy-saving technology transfer. Accordingly, China is a main beneficiary of early technology transfer. Herein, our results highlight the importance of timely international technology transfer for efficiently meeting global emission targets. Most of the consumption gains from endogenous growth are captured in the baseline. Moreover, mitigation costs turn out to be insensitive to changes in most of the parameters of endogenous growth. A higher effectivity of energy-specific relative to labor-specific expenditures on innovation and imitation reduces mitigation costs, though.

We develop and apply a consistent and comprehensive theoretical framework for assessing whether economic growth is compatible with sustaining wellbeing over time. Our approach differs from earlier approaches by concentrating on wealth rather than income. Sustainability is demonstrated by showing that a properly defined comprehensive measure of wealth is maintained through time. Our wealth measure is unusually comprehensive, capturing not only reproducible and human capital but also natural capital, health improvements and technological change. We apply the framework to five countries: the United States, China, Brazil, India and Venezuela. We show that the often-neglected contributors to wealth – technological change, natural capital and health capital – fundamentally affect the conclusions one draws about whether given nations are achieving sustainability. Indeed, even countries that display sustainability differ considerably in the kinds of capital that contribute to it.

Mitigating climate change is one of the biggest challenges that confront mankind in the present millennium. The problem has continued to dominate public debates in terms of its origin, sources, potential impacts and possibly adaptation strategies. In this paper, the contributions of energy to the climate change debate are explored. The analysis shows that since about 1850, the global use of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) has increased and dominated world energy consumption and supply. The rapid rise in fossil fuel combustion has produced a corresponding rapid growth in CO2 emissions and accounts for over 80% of global anthropogenic green house gas emissions (GHGs) in 2008. It was shown that a substantial amount of CO2 emissions still emanates from the increased use of heavy polluting fuel like coal by industrializing countries like the United States, Japan and China. Historically, the developed countries have contributed the most to cumulative global CO2 emissions and still have the highest total historical emission. A disaggregated analysis indicates that two sectors of the economy, electricity and heat as well as the transport sector (majorly road transport), emit greater amounts of GHGs. Some mitigation mechanisms have been suggested including improved energy efficiency, energy pricing reforms, imposition of carbon emission taxes, promoting investment in renewable energy technologies and creating public environmental awareness.

On demontre empiriquement que les ressources naturelles ne sont pas un facteur de de terioration systematique de la qualite institutionnelle d’un pays. Les regimes parlementaires ne connaissent aucun effet de la rente, tiree des ressources naturelles, sur leurs institutions. En revanche, les systemes presidentiels sont soumis a un effet non lineaire (courbe en U in verse) des ressources naturelles sur les institutions. Pour de faibles montants de ressources naturelles, les institutions fournissent suffisamment d’incitations pour eviter la mise en place d’institutions de mauvaise qualite tournees vers l’extration de la rente. En revanche, si les institutions ne fournissent pas des incitations suffisantes, on observe alors une deterioration de la qualite institutionnelle. Cet effet n’apparait que dans les regimes presidentiels. Si l’on re d uit l’echantillon aux pays democratiques, les resultats sont identiques.

During human societyâ€(tm)s development on large geographical areas, a series of cultural systems have appeared and have determined a certain approach concerning the environment and social relations. These systems of thought persist even today and they are strongly influenced by individualsâ€(tm) thinking and approaches in that society, thing that requires a specific approach for the implementation of these relatively new concepts (e.g. sustainable development, pollution, ecological approaches on social life). Furthermore, the continuous growth of the demand for energy in the world is seen as an alarm. Between 1970 and 1997 world energy consumption has almost doubled and it is projected to grow by about 57% during 2004-2030 and the thing which should be mentioned is that with the increasing energy demand, pollution levels will increase too. But we must not forget that electric and thermal power represent one of the basic needs of mankind, and when the fulfilment of this need started to affect the climate and implicitly human health this problem turned into a hardly manageable one. We must not forget that the worldâ€(tm)s population is growing rapidly and the level of pollution per capita increased we might even say in direct proportion. In many cases, increased pollution has its explanation in the growing number of individuals at global level and also the increasing needs, desires, aspirations, standard of living, of these. This paper intends to objectively analyse the interconnections that arise between the environment and the growth of the demand for energy, emphasizing the devastating effects of pollution created by burning fossil fuels in order to obtain electric and thermal power as well as the current and future possibilities for the replacement of these energy reserves with renewable energy reserves. The whole analysis will be accompanied by case studies and will follow strictly imposed goals by sustainable development.

The Appalachian Regional Commission’s definition of the Appalachian region is the one used most often by researchers, politicians, and the popular press. The uncritical use of this definition of Appalachia raises issues of both selection bias and excess heterogeneity in regression analysis of Appalachian income and growth. The ARC was created as part of President Johnson’s war on poverty, and the geographical extent of its purview has been driven by politics and by the geography of poverty, neither of which is exogenous. It is well known that the use of endogenous variables to choose a sample creates bias and inconsistency in estimation of regression coefficients. To identify the counties that belong to the Appalachian region exogenously we use an algorithm based on three criteria: topography, contiguity, and prevalence of slavery in the 1860 census. We apply our sample to growth regressions using data from 1970 to 2008, addressing the question of the existence of a resource curse from coal extraction. For this model we find strong evidence of excess heterogeneity, but not bias.

Im Dezember 2011 startete eine Kampagne des Bundeswirtschaftsministeriums unter dem Motto »Kraftwerke? Ja bitte!«. Um im Zuge der Energiewende und des Atomausstiegs weiterhin Versorgungssicherheit und bezahlbaren Strom zu gewährleisten, seien neue Kohle- und Gaskraftwerke unabdinglich. In dieser »Kurz-zum-Klima«-Ausgabe wird ein Überblick über die Situation der Kohleenergie in Deutschland gegeben und deren Rolle in der Energiewende genauer betrachtet. Es zeigt sich, dass die Kohle auf absehbare Zeit eine nicht zu unterschätzende Rolle in der Stromerzeugung in Deutschland einnehmen wird, was mit dementsprechend hohen CO2-Emissionen verbunden ist und so die Klimaziele Deutschlands in Gefahr bringt. Neben der Erreichung der Klimaziele wird auch das Ziel, im Jahr 2050 80% des Strommixes aus Erneuerbaren zu gewinnen, gefährdet. Bisher wurde von Seiten der Politik jedoch noch nichts unternommen, um Investitionen in flexible Reservekapazitäten zu fördern. Nach aktuellem Wissens- und Technologiestand kommen für solch flexible Kapazitäten nur Gaskraftwerke in Frage, die allerdings unter aktuellen Bedingungen nicht rentabel sind. Investitionsanreize in solche Kraftwerke sind daher dringend notwendig.