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Although host governments and investors may share one common objective - the desire for projects to generate high levels off revenue - their other goals are not entirely aligned. Host governments aim to maximize rent for their country over time, while achieving other development and socioeconomic objectives. Investors aim to ensure that the return on investment is consistent with the risk associated with the project, and with their corporations' strategic objectives. To reconcile these often conflicting objectives, more and more countries rely on transparent institutional arrangements and flexible, nuetral fiscal regimes. This paper examines the key elements of the legal and fiscal frameworks utilized in the petroleum sector and aims to outline desirable features that should be considered in the design of fiscal policy with the objective of optimizing the host government's benefits, taking into account the effect this would have on the private sector's investment.
A number of countries have recently discovered and are developing oil and gas reserves. Policy makers in such countries are anxious to obtain the greatest benefits for their economies from the extraction of these exhaustible resources by designing appropriate policies to achieve desired goals. One important theme of such policies is the so-called local content created by the sector—the extent to which the output of the extractive industry sector generates further benefits to the economy beyond the direct contribution of its value-added, through its links to other sectors. While local content policies have the potential to stimulate broad-based economic development, their application in pet...
Examines the demographic shifts in the Middle East and North Africa, placing them in their social, political and economic contexts.
This paper examines the effect of stabilization funds on the volatility of government expenditure in resource-rich countries. Using a panel data set of 68 resource-rich countries over 1988–2012, the results find that the existence of stabilization funds contributes to smoothing government expenditure. The spending volatility in countries that have established such funds is found to be 13 percent lower in the main estimation, and similar impacts are found in robustness tests. The analysis also shows that political institutions and fiscal rules are significant factors in reducing the expenditure volatility, while highlighting the roles of the size of economy, diversified exports, real sector management, and financial markets.
Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) can be effective tools for national resources revenue management. These state-owned investments, funded by commodity exports, foreign exchange reserves, or other national assets, are adaptable to the challenges posed by financial shocks and have been successfully employed in an increasing number of countries. The number of SWFs continues to grow, with the largest funds managing trillions of dollars in assets among them. However, given the significant variations among SWFs, it can be difficult to compare funds that differ in size, scope, and mandate. This book provides a sorely needed practical look at how these funds work—and how they should work. The New Fron...
This is Part Two of a crucially significant two-volume set on the nature of transfer pricing that fully elucidates how the growing body of applicable rules works in practice. The preceding volume, subtitled General Topics and Specific Transactions, focused on basic principles and specialized topics. This volume enlarges the scope of the first volume, particularly concerning industry specifics, regional considerations, the use of new technologies, and the intersection between transfer pricing rules and other disciplines. As in the first volume, stakeholding contributors from government, multinational companies, international organizations, advisory groups, and academia offer deeply informed p...
Energy transition is a complex global problem, with governance and policies cutting across multiple legal silos including human rights, environment, international economics, finance, energy, law of the sea, and transnational commerce. As of yet, there is no comprehensive treatment of the legal principles governing energy transition as a whole. Furthermore, energy transition must solve a trilemma that pits energy equity (the need to provide access to energy needed to fuel human development) and energy security (the need to provide resilient and reliable energy systems) against environmental sustainability. Without a comprehensive understanding of these issues, law and policy-makers risk exace...
This report discusses the challenges and opportunities associated with the freshwater needs in oil and gas operations and the beneficial use of produced water. Practical solutions are offered to support evidence-based policy making for an integrated and sustainable approach to water management.
In recent years, a number of emerging economies have begun to play a growing role in the finance of infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa. Their combined resource flows are now comparable in scale to traditional Official Development Assistance (ODA) from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries or to capital from private investors. These emerging financiers include China, India, and the Gulf States, with China being by far the largest player.Despite its importance, relatively little is known about the value of Chinese finance. The main purpose of this study is to.
This volume focuses on the political economy surrounding the detailed decisions that governments make at each step of the value chain for natural resource management. From the perspective of public interest or good governance, many resource-dependent developing countries pursue apparently short-sighted and sub-optimal policies in relation to the extraction and capture of resource rents, and to spending and savings from their resource endowments. This work contextualizes these micro-level choices and outcomes.