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A new dash for copper is underway - how will it play out? Expert Q&A
No full textCopper is in the headlines after Australian mining giant BHP made a bid for UK-based rival Anglo American, valuing the company at US$39 billion (£31 billion). Together, the two companies would control around 10% of the world copper market.Though Anglo American has rejected the offer as too low, the received wisdom is that it is the start of a takeover battle, and that it could also kick off a round of consolidation in the mining sector with copper at the centre. We asked commodities specialist and Professor of Economics Sambit Bhattacharyya of the University of Sussex to explain why copper is becoming so popular and what it means for the future.</p
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Growth Miracles and Growth Debacles: Exploring Root Causes
No full textIn this fascinating book, Sambit Bhattacharyya presents a detailed account of the socio-economic processes that create broad variations in living standards across the globe. The author examines the world's economic history over the last five centuries, replete with growth miracles and growth debacles: growth in Britain was steady, yet China lost her early advantage; North America settler colonies performed significantly better than those of Asia and Africa; Australia and Argentina were notably similar at the start of the twentieth century but delivered strikingly different growth outcomes. The book argues that these differences in growth rate are best explained by an interplay of factors, namely economic, political and geographical. In conclusion it presents long-run comparative growth narratives for Africa, China, India, the Americas, Russia and Western Europe. Presenting a unique and original analytical framework to explain economic growth and decline, and bridging empirical growth literature and economic history, this book will prove a stimulating read for both academic and professional economists, and scholars of economic history and economic growth. Other social scientists including sociologists, political scientists and economic historians will also find the book to be of great value
Root Causes of African Underdevelopment
No full textWhat are the root causes of Africa's current state of under-development? Is it the long history of slave trade, the legacy of extractive colonial institutions, or the fallout of malaria? We investigate the relative contributions of these factors using Atlantic distance, Indian Ocean distance, Saharan distance, Red Sea distance, log settler mortality and malaria ecology as instruments. The results show that malaria matters the most and all other factors are statistically insignificant. Malaria also negatively affects savings. The results are robust even when the malaria ecology instrument is replaced by frost, humidity and rainfall and when the latter are used as additional control variables. We find that frost alone is enough to knock off the effects of slave trade and institutions on long-term development in Africa. Copyright 2009 The author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for the Study of African Economies. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: [email protected], Oxford University Press.
Political origins of financial structure
No full textThere is growing policy interest in the role of financial structure in promoting development. However, very little is known about how different financial structures emerge and evolve. In this paper we empirically assess the political origins of financial structure. Using difference-in difference estimation and annual data, we study the effects of democratization on financial structure in a sample of 96 countries covering the period 1970 to 2005. Democratization here corresponds to the event of becoming a democracy. We find that democratization leads to a more market-based financial system. Democratic change could also be incremental rather than a one off. To identify the effect of incremental democratic change on financial structure we estimate a separate model and find that democracy matters. We also find that countries with substantial democratic capital are more likely to have a market-based financial structure. Our main results are robust to a variety of controls, Arellano-Bond GMM estimation, alternative measures of democracy and financial structure, and across different samples
cycles and the resource curse in Australia: 1900 to 2007
No full textThe Australian economy experienced very frequent and sizeable terms of trade shocks. These shocks at times were more pronounced than commodity exporting developing countries and disproportionately benefited the extreme top end of income distribution. Did they derail overall economic progress? Circumstantial evidence suggests that they did not, but hard econometric evidence appears to be rare. In this paper, I revisit the Australian resource curse question from a long-run perspective. Using time series data on commodity prices, real GDP, real wages, non-farm GDP, manufacturing share of GDP, and manufacturing share of employment covering the period 1900 to 2007, I find very little evidence of a resource curse. Commodity booms in general and positive agricultural price shocks in particular appear to have impacted the rest of the economy positively both in short- and long-run. The positive effect is primarily led by expansion in manufacturing. This is perhaps reflective of trade protection, labour and credit market flexibility, and relatively open skilled migration in Australia especially during the post-war period
Trade liberalization and institutional development
No full textRecent research shows that the majority of cross-national variation in institutions is related to history. The within variation however is somewhat less explored. Using panel data covering the periods 1865 – 1940 and 1980 – 2000 & 31 and 103 countries respectively, we find that the within variation in economic institutions (namely property rights and contracts) can be explained by trade liberalization. To address endogeneity concern we use export partner growth and rainfall as instruments for trade liberalization and log GDP per capita respectively and estimate our model using Limited Information Maximum Likelihood (LIML) Fuller estimation method. Our basic result holds after controlling for country fixed effects, time varying common shocks, and various additional covariates. It is also robust to various alternative measures of liberalization and institutions, as well as across different samples
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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