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A bill establishing three Special Economic Zones (ZEE) in the center and south of the country was published In September 2017. The ZEE aim to detonate regional development through flexible and attractive conditions for investments, such as discounts in tax payments and benefits for companies that train their employees, among others. The presentation focuses on the case of Campeche, one of the chosen locations. This state in Southeast Mexico has one of the largest stocks of natural resources in the whole country, including oil, forestry, and fishing, among others. However, even though this have been widely exploited in the past, Campeche has severely underperformed in the past 10 years, having spent almost the totality of the period in an economic recession. This presentation aims to contribute to the analysis of the Special Economic Zones program, asking whether a development strategy based on the exploitation of natural resources, as implied by the election of the zones and the investment proposals received until now, may generate sustainable relationships in three dimensions: social, economic and environmental. The presentation proposes to identify key factors behind the Southeast failure and open the doors to new paradigms that contribute to the generation of inclusive development strategies in our country.

AbstractThe juxtaposition of oil and gas wells against the Rocky Mountains on Colorado's Front Range provides a picture of the complicated interaction between Colorado's natural resources above and below ground. As hydraulic fracturing has increased oil and gas development—bringing jobs and money to an already highly sought after amenity‐rich area—it has also increased concerns about the impact on natural amenities, such as water quality and mountain views. Using data on housing sales between 2006 and 2014, we estimate how shale development is capitalized into housing prices in a booming market when households are in close proximity to other natural amenities. We find that shale development negatively impacts house prices, more so for houses with private water and houses that are closer to the mountains, but that competition for land along the Front Range has driven up house prices overall in the region. Our results also suggest the policy responses to shale development may differ for growing, amenity‐rich regions.

This paper illustrates how politics on resource entitlement have historically shaped the vulnerable condition of people in Nuapada district (formerly Nawapara sub-division of Kalahandi district) of Orissa, India. It finds that the underutilisation of existing resources in the district, backed by loopholes in district administration, has widened the vulnerability conditions of local people. The collapse of the state command economy during post-economic reform and the subsequent withdrawal of welfare state from welfare activities, which opens space for elite groups and middlemen to exploit both resources and local people, have caused serious disruption in the development of the district as evident from the declining livelihood options and increasing distress migration. Thus there is a need to bring reform in equitable distribution of resources at the state level.

Corporate–community relations in the Niger Delta region are, almost without exception, framed in the context of conflict, borne out of dysfunctional or misguided corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies and practices by oil transnationals. Based on a comparative study of the CSR policies and practices of Shell, Total and Agip in six oil-bearing communities in Rivers State, a core oil-bearing state in the Niger Delta, this paper contests this orthodoxy, pointing out significant variations in the intensity and scale of conflicts between host communities and different oil transnational corportions (TNCs) in the region. The key question explored in the study is: to what extent is the variation in CSR policy and practices implicated in variation in the intensity and scale of conflicts between host communities and oil TNCs in the Niger Delta? We conclude that the intensity and scale of conflict in corporate–community relations in the Niger Delta region are a function of the CSR pattern of the operating oil TNC. The implications of this for CSR policy and practice are explored.

The article considers the nature and limits of the impact local fiscal decentralization exerts on private fixed capital investments in resource-rich Russia's regions. The relevance of this topic is due, firstly, to the fact that sufficient expenditure and revenue powers at the local level ensure sustainable economic development, and secondly, the lack of research on relationship between investments and local fiscal decentralization in Russia. The study confirms the existence of an inverted U-shaped curve in the investment-decentralization association for the group of resource-rich regions as well as the superiority of revenue decentralization over expenditure decentralization in terms of its impact on economic development. For 2009—2016, investments were the highest when local fiscal decentralization was 46—47% and 43—51% in expenditure and revenue aspects, respectively (for Russia as a whole, 35—36% and 33—34%). Tax revenues in those figures do not exceed 30 p.p., the rest is occupied by earmarked grants (subsidies) and, especially, general-purpose grants ("dotatsii"). The excess of the optimal level of revenue decentralization over the expenditure one in resource-rich regions is explained by drivers of relatively large local powers there — less dependence on federal transfers, low regional tax burden, and greater elasticity of regional fiscal policy to external factors. The overall excess of optimal levels in comparison to Russia as a whole is explained by high local demand for both differentiation of expenditures and intraregional intergovernmental redistribution in those regions. Reduction of fiscal decentralization for 2008—2018 curbed private investment. The greatest losses were incurred by lack of revenue decentralization in the resource-rich regions, which could have reached more than 80% of the median investments.