IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/col/000092/014612.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Natural Resources, Redistribution and Human Capital Formation

Author

Listed:
  • Jorge M. Aguero
  • Carlos Felipe Balcázar
  • Stanislao Maldonado
  • Hugo Ñopo

Abstract

How do resource booms affect human capital accumulation? We exploit time and spatial variation generated by the commodity boom across local governments in Peru to measure the effect of natural resources on human capital formation. We explore the effect of both mining production and tax revenues on test scores, finding a substantial and statistically significant effect for the latter. Transfers to local governments from mining tax revenues are linked to an increase in math test scores of around 0.23 standard deviations. We find that the hiring of permanent teachers as well as the increases in parental employment and improvements in health outcomes of adults and children are plausible mechanisms for such large effect on learning. These findings suggest that redistributive policies could facilitate the accumulation of human capital in resource abundant developing countries as a way to avoid the natural resources curse.

Suggested Citation

  • Jorge M. Aguero & Carlos Felipe Balcázar & Stanislao Maldonado & Hugo Ñopo, 2016. "Natural Resources, Redistribution and Human Capital Formation," Documentos de Trabajo 14612, Universidad del Rosario.
  • Handle: RePEc:col:000092:014612
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repository.urosario.edu.co/bitstream/id/73796/dt192.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Resource booms; academic achievement; intergovernmental transfers.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
    • I25 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Economic Development
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:col:000092:014612. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Facultad de Economía (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ferosco.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.