When Does Oil Harm Child Mortality?

Bellinger, Nisha; Fails, Matthew D.

doi:10.1177/1065912920931201

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 74 publications

(64 reference statements)

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“…Wigley (2017) finds that petroleum-poor countries outperform petroleum-rich countries for reducing under-five mortality in a panel of 167 countries. Bellinger and Fails (2020) analyze the effect of oil wealth on child mortality rates in non-democratic countries and identify some specific conditions under which oil can be detrimental to child mortality. What about Africa?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural resources, child mortality and governance quality in African countries

et al. 2023

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural resources, child mortality and governance quality in African countries

et al. 2023

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“…Analyses by Grundholm (2020), Song (2022), and Geddes, Wright, and Frantz (2018, 196–7), for instance, demonstrate that autocratic leaders who have consolidated their power over the political and security apparatus are less likely to experience a coup and regime breakdown. Similarly, existing scholarship suggests that leaders who believe they survive in power longer tend to adopt more forward-looking policies, including in the realms of macroeconomic policy objectives (Nordhaus, 1975), investment in public goods (Olson, 1993), the use of foreign aid (Wright, 2008), attention to HIV/ADS (Dionne, 2011), the strength of property rights and the level of inward foreign direct investment (Li, 2009; Moon, 2015), and the use of oil rents (Bellinger and Fails, 2021). The closest prior work is Kendall-Taylor (2011, 2012), who demonstrates that politically secure leaders are more likely to invest natural resource profits abroad, while more vulnerable autocrats opt to spend them domestically in a bid to shore up their support coalition.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Cheibub, 1998; Chen and, Ye 2020; Moon, 2015; Wright, 2008) – are problematic in multiple ways. For an overview of potential flaws with each approach as an operational measure of “time horizons,” see Bellinger and Fails (2021). Second, neither approach measures whether leaders are able to override policy opposition from regime insiders, or conversely whether they must share in the policy-making process with these other elites.…”

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When do Autocrats Create Sovereign Wealth Funds?

Eldredge

Fails

2022

Political Research Quarterly

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The recent proliferation of Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) in authoritarian regimes is puzzling. While SWFs can generate political, financial, and geopolitical benefits in the long-term, their creation also sharply impedes an autocrat’s ability to fund current patronage and other regime-stabilizing public and private goods. What explains the creation of autocratic SWFs? We argue that sovereign wealth funds are more likely to emerge when autocratic leaders possess a high degree of policy-making autonomy. Policy-making autonomy allows leaders to override any opposition from regime insiders who might prefer to keep capital at home and available for patronage. At the same time, such leaders are more politically secure, and thus are more confident that they will remain in power to reap the medium to long-term financial rewards of these funds. We operationalize this concept with indicators that measure whether an autocrat has consolidated their authority over the regime’s party infrastructure and employ survival analysis on a global sample of autocratic regimes from 1960–2010. We find robust support for our argument and describe how our findings provide new insights on the political determinants of sovereign wealth funds and the consequences of authoritarian power-sharing institutions.

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Natural resources, child mortality and governance quality in African countries

Njangang¹,

Tadadjeu²,

Asongu

et al. 2021

SSRN Journal

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This paper contributes to the literature by investigating the effect of natural resources on under-five mortality in a sample of 50 African countries over the period 1996 to 2018. We also examine the extent to which governance shapes the relationship between natural resources and under-five mortality. Our results show that natural resources have increased under-five mortality. Resource rents also have detrimental effects on child mortality by age, gender, and the three major causes of infant mortality from infectious diseases. However, an extended analysis of different types of natural resources suggests that point resources (such as oil, natural gas and mineral rents) increase under-five mortality, in contrast to the diffuse resources (such as forest rent). We also find that governance mitigates the positive effect of natural resources on child mortality. Corresponding governance policy thresholds that should be attained in order to reverse the positive effects of natural resources on child mortality are provided. We thus suggest an increase in the funds allocated to the health sector from resource rents and encourage efforts to improve governance standards in sampled countries.

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When Does Oil Harm Child Mortality?

Cited by 3 publications

References 74 publications

Natural resources, child mortality and governance quality in African countries

Natural resources, child mortality and governance quality in African countries

When do Autocrats Create Sovereign Wealth Funds?

Natural resources, child mortality and governance quality in African countries

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