Mining and the Quality of Public Services : The Role of Local Governance and Decentralization
This paper investigates the local effects of mining on the quality of public services and on people's optimism about their future living conditions. It also assesses the mediating role of local institutions and local governments~^!!^ taxing ri...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2020
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/600381599579774028/Mining-and-the-Quality-of-Public-Services-The-Role-of-Local-Governance-and-Decentralization http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34471 |
| Summary: | This paper investigates the local
effects of mining on the quality of public services and on
people's optimism about their future living conditions.
It also assesses the mediating role of local institutions
and local governments~^!!^ taxing rights in shaping the
proximity-to-mine effects. The empirical framework connects
more than 130,000 respondents from the Afrobarometer survey
data (2005-2015) to their closest mines based on the
geolocation coordinates of the enumeration areas (EA) and
data on the mines and their respective status from the SNL
Metals & Mining. The geo-referenced data are matched
with new indicators on local governments~^!!^ taxing rights
across the African continent. The results suggest that
citizens living near an active mine are less likely to
approve government performance in key public goods and
services -- including health, job creation and improving
living standards of the poor. On the mediating role of local
governance and local taxing rights, the findings point to a
negative effect of local corruption, yet a positive effect
of local authorities’ discretion over tax and revenues.
However, the positive marginal effect of local taxing powers
tends to reduce in environments with poor quality of local
governance, high incidence of bribe payment and low level of
trust in local government officials. Residents of mining
communities with low corruption and comparatively high-level
of raising revenue ability have the highest rate of positive
appraisal compared to the other scenarios. |
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