Conference Agenda

The integration of domestic firms into the mining global value chain (GVC) can bolster local economies, yet the scale and impact of these linkages remain unclear. This study examines the mining value chain in Kitwe, a key mining hub in Zambia’s Copperbelt. Ten years of VAT data on domestic purchases and imports reveal that mine suppliers adjust both their domestic and international procurement in response to fluctuations in the international copper price. Our cross-sectional firm survey reveals GVC integration is of strong interest among local firms. Ultimately, Zambia faces a double-edged sword: while local firms seek deeper integration into the mining GVC to boost revenue, profits, exports, and employment, the financialization of the global copper trade ties Zambia to the volatility of commodity prices. Thus, the government must ensure optimal backward linkages between local firms and mines to foster resilient, non-resource-dependent growth and maximize VAT, tariff, and income tax revenue.

Disillusionment with income as a measure of well-being has led to alternative measures that are broader and focus on outcomes. Deaton (2008), among others, espouses a measure of well-being called life evaluation/satisfaction that aggregates components of well-being, such as economic status, health, family circumstances and even human and political rights. We have used this measure of life evaluation. As there is no study of the relationship between life evaluation and trust in the present Indian government/National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), our present study aims to fill this gap, based on the Gallup World Poll Survey for India, covering the period 2018-2021. As trust in the NDA is endogenous, 2SLS and Lewbel IV estimators have been used. Our analysis confirms robustly that trust in the NDA determines life evaluation, controlling for other covariates. As trust in the NDA decreased over the period analysed, so did the life evaluation

Based on a new granular and exhaustive dataset on effective payments made by listed extractive (mining, oil & gas) firms to governments worldwide, we find that a 1% increase in commodity prices leads to a 0.3% increase in fiscal windfalls for states. We find that rich source countries benefit from a higher proportional increase of their fiscal windfalls than lower-income countries during commodity price increases. This result indicates that tax systems in lower-income countries favor more stable revenues at the expense of benefiting more from commodity price booms. The revenue implications may be substantial in contexts of commodity price booms.