2021/11/10 by Sandro Provenzano, Provenzano, Sandro, Hannah Bull +1 · 1 citation
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Engineering · #FOS: Economics and business #General Economics (econ.GN) #Mining and Resource Management #Natural Resources and Economic Development
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2111.05783
openalex publication_date 2021/11/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Using state-of-the-art techniques in computer vision, we analyze one million\nsatellite images covering 12% of the African continent between 1984 and 2019 to\ntrack local development around 1,658 mineral deposits. We use stacked event\nstudies and difference-in-difference models to estimate the impact of mine\nopenings and closings. The magnitude of the effect of mine openings is\nconsiderable - after 15 years, urban areas within 20km of an opening mine\nalmost double in size. We find strong evidence of a political resource curse at\nthe local level. Although mining boosts the local economy in democratic\ncountries, these gains are meager in autocracies and come at the expense of\ntripling the likelihood of conflict relative to prior the onset of mining.\nFurthermore, our results suggest that the growth acceleration in mining areas\nis only temporary and diminishes with the closure of the mine.\n