Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cid/wpfacu/162.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Examining Beneficiation

Author

Listed:
  • Ricardo Hausmann

    (Harvard's Growth Lab)

  • Bailey Klinger
  • Robert Lawrence
  • Arne Nagengast
Abstract
Beneficiation, moving downstream, and promoting greater value added in natural resources are very common policy initiatives to stimulate new export sectors in developing countries, largely based on the premise that this is a natural and logical path for structural transformation. But upon closer examination, we find that very few countries that export raw materials also export their processed forms, or transition to greater processing. The quantitative analysis finds that broad factor intensities do a much better job of identifying patterns of production and structural transformation than forward linkages, which have an insignificant impact despite the fact that our data is biased against finding significant effects of factor intensities and towards finding significant effects of forward linkages. Moreover, the explanatory power of forward linkages is even smaller in sectors with high transport costs, and in sectors classified as primary products or raw materials, which are the most common targets of such policies. Finally, the results are the same even when only considering developed countries, meaning that colonial legacy inhibiting transitions to natural resource processing are not to blame. These results suggest that policies to promote greater downstream processing as an export promotion policy are misguided. Structural transformation favors sectors with similar technological requirements, factor intensities, and other requisite capabilities, not products connected in production chains. There is no reason for countries like South Africa to focus attention on beneficiation at the expense of policies that would allow other export sectors to emerge. This makes no sense conceptually, and is completely inconsistent with international experience. Quite simply, beneficiation is a bad policy paradigm.

Suggested Citation

  • Ricardo Hausmann & Bailey Klinger & Robert Lawrence & Arne Nagengast, 2008. "Examining Beneficiation," CID Working Papers 162, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    • Handle: RePEc:cid:wpfacu:162
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/cid/files/publications/faculty-working-papers/162.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alexis Habiyaremye & Evans Mupela, 2019. "How effective is local beneficiation policy in enhancing rural income and employment? The case of agro-processing beneficiation in Tzaneen, South Africa," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 34(4), pages 329-345, June.
    2. Savona, María, 2016. "Global structural change and value chains in services: a reappraisal," Coediciones, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), number 43200.
    3. Farole, Thomas & Reis, Jose Guilherme & Wagle, Swarnim, 2010. "Analyzing trade competitiveness : a diagnostics approach," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5329, The World Bank.
    4. Frankel, Jeffrey A., 2010. "The Natural Resource Curse: A Survey," Scholarly Articles 4454156, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
    5. Ricardo Hausmann & Tim O'Brien & Andres Fortunato & Alexia Lochmann & Kishan Shah & Lucila Venturi & Sheyla Enciso & Ekaterina Vashkinskaya & Ketan Ahuja & Bailey Klinger & Federico Sturzenegger & Mar, 2023. "Growth Through Inclusion in South Africa," Growth Lab Working Papers 222, Harvard's Growth Lab.
      • Ricardo Hausmann & Tim O'Brien & Andres Fortunato & Alexia Lochmann & Kishan Shah & Lucila Venturi & Sheyla Enciso & Ekaterina Vashkinskaya & Ketan Ahuja & Bailey Klinger & Federico Sturzenegger & Mar, 2023. "Growth Through Inclusion in South Africa," CID Working Papers 434, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    6. Filippo Bontadini & Maria Savona, 2019. "Revisiting the Natural Resource ‘Curse’ in the Context of Trade in Value Added: Enclave or High-development Backward Linkages?," SPRU Working Paper Series 2019-15, SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School.
    7. Javier López González & Valentina Meliciani & Maria Savona, 2019. "When Linder meets Hirschman: inter-industry linkages and global value chains in business services," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 28(6), pages 1555-1586.
    8. Mamina, Mathew T. & Maganga, Rutendo & Dzwiti, Kudakwashe, 2020. "An analysis of Zimbabwe's comparative advantage in the beneficiation and value addition of minerals," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    9. Cesar A. Hidalgo, 2012. "Discovering East Africa's Industrial Opportunities," Papers 1203.0163, arXiv.org.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Beneficiation; Linkages; Structural Transformation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F10 - International Economics - - Trade - - - General
    • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General
    • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products

    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:cid:wpfacu:162. 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: Chuck McKenney (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ciharus.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.