Windfalls and Economic Development: The Effect of Natural Resource Booms and Chinese Development Finance
This thesis is a collection of three essays that examine the macroeconomic impact of natural resource windfalls and the microeconomic impact of Chinese development finance. The aim is to understand how fiscal windfalls largely driven by events in the world affect economic development. The first chapter studies the impact of commodity related income gains on the number of exporters and the average export value per exporter within the manufacturing sector. A large body of theoretical and empirical literature showed that these windfalls could be detrimental to the manufacturing sector, but none untangled the margins through which the exports from the manufacturing sector adjusts to these windfalls. I exploit the exogenous variation in the windfalls generated by the increase in prices of all major commodities during the early 2000s to fill this gap in the literature. First, I find that manufacturing industries that historically had a relatively higher share of exports to value added ratio (more exportable) tend to be negatively affected relative to the other manufacturing industries at both margins. Secondly, the extensive margin is largely driven by entrants. i.e., the number of new exporting firms that enter more exportable industries decline relative to the less exportable industries. Thirdly, for the more exportable industries, the average export value per incumbent exporters industries decline while that of the new exporters increases relative to the less exportable industries. It has often been argued that countries that produce natural resources mobilize less non-resource tax revenues than other countries. In the second chapter, I exploit the arguably exogenous variation in the timing of giant oilfield discoveries to examine the impact of natural resource abundance on non-resource tax revenue. The timing of giant oilfield discoveries is arguably exogenous and thus renders them appealing to empirically examine this argument. This allows me to examine the performance of non-resource tax revenue effort before and immediately after discovery as well as the period corresponding to the inflow of revenues from the production. I find that non-resource tax revenues tend to increase in the period following the discovery before the onset of production and after production commences. This effect is due to an increase in non-resource indirect tax revenues. Further analysis shows that both the total and indirect non-resource tax revenues, experience an increase in only low- middle income countries. This effect is largely driven by an increase in the consumption of goods and services. Improvement in agricultural productivity plays a key role in the process of economic development. Investment in critical infrastructure has been documented in the literature as one of the pathways to boost agricultural productivity. In the third chapter, I study the causal impact of Chinese development finance on agricultural productivity in Tanzania, at the sub-national level. I combine household panel data with rich farm level information with geocoded Chinese development projects. I then exploit the within village level variation in the total number of Chinese financed development projects in a panel fixed effects model to examine their effects on agricultural productivity. I find a positive effect on agricultural productivity in villages that are located within 25 km of these projects. This is largely driven by economic infrastructure. The results are robust to alternative definitions of Chinese financed development projects. I also find that the potential mechanisms driving the results are agricultural commercialization and access to improved seeds. This suggests that these projects connect farmers to input and output markets.
Natural resources, Commodity Windfalls, China, Manufacturing Exports, Tax Revenues, Agricultural productivity
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