Browsing by Author "Baskaran, Thushyanthan"

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    Fiscal Capacity and Government Accountability in Sub-Saharan Africa
    (2011-06) Baskaran, Thushyanthan; Bigsten, Arne; University of Gothenburg, Dept of Economics
    Historical evidence from the developed world suggests that the expansion of the mod- ern states’ fiscal capacity (i. e. its ability to tax citizens) eventually led to more democratic and less corrupt governments. Since sub-Saharan African countries are currently in a pro- cess of state building, we study whether a positive effect of fiscal capacity on government accountability prevails in contemporaneous sub-Saharan Africa, too. We conduct the em- pirical analysis with data covering 23 African countries over the 1960-2008 period. The results suggest that fiscal capacity increases government accountability in sub-Saharan Africa.
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    Gold mining and education: a long-run resource curse in Africa?
    (2016-06) Ahlerup, Pelle; Baskaran, Thushyanthan; Bigsten, Arne; Dept. of Economics, University of Gothenburg
    We provide micro-level evidence on an important channel through which mineral resources may adversely affect development in the long-run: lower educational attainment. Combining Afrobarometer survey data with geocoded data on the discovery and shutdown dates of of gold mines, we show that respondents who had a gold mine within their district when they were in adolescence have significantly lower educational attainment. These results are robust to the omission of individual countries, different definitions of adulthood, the use of alternative data from the Development and Health Surveys (DHS), and buffer-based approaches to define neighborhood. Regarding mechanisms, we conclude that the educational costs of mines are likely due to households making myopic educational decisions when employment in gold mining is an alternative. We explore and rule out competing mechanism such as endogenous migration, a lower provision of public goods by the government, and a higher propensity for violent conflicts in gold mining districts.