Riding the Boom: How should monetary and fiscal policy manage natural resource wealth?

自然资源的发现通常伴随着乐观和兴奋。在2007年发现近海石油后，加纳总统约翰·库福尔说：“有了石油作为一剂强心针，我们就要飞起来了。”然而，这种兴奋并不总是很好的。“资源诅咒”的存在现在已在学术文献中得到确认，其中描述了拥有自然资源的国家的增长率系统地低于没有自然资源的国家。从尼日利亚到委内瑞拉，世界各国都目睹了这种诅咒。随着发展中国家的工业化推高了对大宗商品的需求，以及在缺乏科普机制的国家发现了新的矿藏，这一点也将变得越来越重要。该项目将考虑财政和货币政策如何解决资源诅咒，并改善世界各地资源丰富国家的生活质量和经济前景。最近发现自然资源的国家最好注意瑙鲁这个小岛国的经验。在20世纪80年代，它是世界上人均GDP最富有的国家。现在，繁荣已经结束，由于经济管理不善和环境退化的双重破坏，该国已被交付给依赖区域邻国的未来。作为一个在瑙鲁长大的孩子，我很快就了解到岛上贫瘠的内部是如何被磷矿开采所塑造的。我在瑙鲁的早期经历为我探究资源诅咒埋下了种子。希望其他国家不要重蹈覆辙的愿望培养了我的关注。这个项目将调查政府和中央银行可以做些什么来避免资源诅咒。现有的学术工作集中在资源财富是否应该花费或节省的长期问题上，并成功地塑造了世界各地的政策。这个项目的重点是如何管理一个经济体的调整资源发现的短期问题。会议将围绕四份文件展开：两份关于货币政策，两份关于财政政策。论文1提出了一个问题，即当一个经济体的各个部分对资源意外之财的反应不同时，积极管理的货币是否可以成为一种额外的货币工具。论文2探讨了在没有信贷市场的发展中国家，通过积极操纵货币，是否有可能实行积极的货币政策。论文3探讨了主权财富基金应如何与现有的外汇储备相协调。第四篇论文探讨了资源收入是否更适合用于削减扭曲性税收，而不是用于国内投资或国外储蓄。该项目将使用宏观经济建模前沿的严格技术，称为“动态随机一般均衡”（DSGE）模型。这些技术使我们能够解决以前未回答的问题，将小规模的人和公司的行为与广泛的宏观经济总量联系起来。该项目将通过放宽一些常用但没有实证支持的关于资本市场和税收的假设，作出理论贡献。这样，它可以作为其他研究人员未来工作的基础。这项研究将在牛津大学进行。它将受益于其在牛津资源丰富经济体分析中心（OxCarre）自然资源管理研究的前沿地位。该项目还将得到Simon Wren-Lewis教授的指导，他在采用最新DSGE技术进行以政策为重点的研究方面拥有丰富的经验。为了确保学术洞察力，该项目将包括在暑期学校进行培训和访问该领域的主要学者。为确保政策相关性，该项目将直接与发达国家和发展中国家的财政和决策者接触。

Natural resource discoveries are usually accompanied by optimism and excitement. After the 2007 discovery of offshore oil, Ghana's President John Kufour said "with oil as a shot in the arm, we're going to fly". However, this excitement is not always well placed. The existence of a "resource curse" is now well established in academic literature, describing the systematically lower growth of countries with natural resources than those without. This curse has already been witnessed in countries around the world, from Nigeria to Venezuela. It will also become increasingly important as the industrialisation of the developing world boost demand for commodities, and new deposits are discovered in countries without the institutional structure to cope with them. This project will consider how fiscal and monetary policy can address the resource curse, and improve the quality of life and economic prospects in resource rich countries around the world. Countries that have recently discovered natural resources would do well to heed the experiences of the tiny island nation of Nauru. During the 1980s it was the richest nation in the world by GDP per capita. Now that the boom is over the country has been consigned to a future of dependence on regional neighbours by the dual ravages of economic mismanagement and environmental degradation. As a child growing up in Nauru I quickly learned of how the barren interior of the island had been shaped by phosphate mining. My early experiences in Nauru planted the seeds of my inquiry into the resource curse. A desire for other countries not to repeat the same mistakes has nurtured my focus.This project will investigate what governments and central banks can do to avoid the resource curse. Existing academic work has focused on the long run question of whether resource wealth should be spent or saved, and has successfully shaped policy around the world. This project focuses on the short run question of how to manage an economy's adjustment to a resource discovery. It will be based around four papers: two on monetary policy and two on fiscal policy. Paper 1 asks if an actively managed currency can be an additional monetary tool when parts of an economy respond differently to a resource windfall. Paper 2 considers whether active monetary policy may be possible in developing countries without credit markets, by actively manipulating the currency. Paper 3 investigates how sovereign wealth funds should be coordinated with existing foreign currency reserves. Paper 4 asks whether resource revenues would be better used for cutting distortionary taxes, rather than investing domestically or saving abroad.The project will use rigorous techniques at the forefront of macroeocnomic modelling, called "dynamic stochastic general equilibrium" (DSGE) models. These techniques allow us to address previously unanswered questions linking the behaviour of people and firms at a small scale to broad macroeconomic aggregates. This project will make a theoretical contribution by relaxing some commonly used but empirically unsupported assumptions on capital markets and taxation. In this way it may serve as a basis for future work by other researchers.This research will be conducted at the University of Oxford. It will benefit from its position at the forefront of research into natural resource management at the Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies (OxCarre). It will also benefit from the mentorship of Professor Simon Wren-Lewis, who has extensive experience in policy-focused research employing the latest DSGE techniques.Finally, this project will engage actively with researchers and policymakers around the world. To ensure academic insight this project will involve training at summer schools and visits to leading academics in the field. To ensure policy relevance the project will engage directly with fiscal and policymakers in both developed and developing countries.