Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis paper presents an extension of gold‐mining problems formulated in earlier work by R. Bellman and J. Kadane. Bellman assumes there are two gold mines labeled A and B, respectively, each with a known initial amount of gold. There is one delicate gold‐mining machine which can be used to excavate one mine per day. Associated with mine A is a known constant return rate and a known constant probability of breakdown. There is also a return rate and probability of breakdown for mine B. Bellman solves the problem of finding a sequential decision procedure to maximize the expected amount of gold obtained before breakdown of the machine. Kadane extends the problem by assuming that there are several mines and that there are sequences of constants such that the jth constant for each mine represents the return rate for the jth excavation of that mine. He also assumes that the probability of breakdown during the jth excavation of a mine depends on j. We extend these results by assuming that the return rates are random variables with known joint distribution and by allowing the probability of breakdown to be a function of previous observations on the return rates. We show that under certain regularity conditions on the joint distributions of the random variables, the optimal policy is: at each stage always select a mine which has maximal conditional expected return per unit risk. This gold‐mining problem is also a formulation of the problem of time‐sequential tactical allocation of bombers to targets. Several examples illustrating these results are presented.

AbstractThis article explores a number of the productivity and marketing difficulties that are hindering the establishment of sustainable livelihoods in small‐scale agriculture in Sierra Leone. The emergence of the artisanal gold mining and trading sector in the central part of the country and synergies between farming and mining cycles are discussed. It is argued that small‐scale agriculture and artisanal mining are not livelihood alternatives but are instead livelihood complements. The potentially catalysing role of gold income in reinvigorating non‐mining activities is critically examined. Recent findings that explain the differing profitability of farming and mining are presented. Finally, a policy outlook is offered on how these fragile dynamics could be harnessed to promote sustainable livelihoods in rural Sierra Leone. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The lack of information about the sharing of mining resource rent between governments and investors is an easy statement to make for Africa. The existing datasets are often insufficient for a deep analysis of African tax law as applied to the natural resource sectors, which has limited the academic and operational approaches. This paper describes the first legal and tax database which specifies the tax regime applied to industrial gold mining companies in 14 African gold-producing countries from 1980 to 2015. The database has three major innovations: (i) an inventory of taxes and duties (rate, base and exemptions) payable during the prospecting phase and mining phase of a gold project; (ii) a new detailed historical record covering 1980 to 2015; (iii) the link between each piece of tax information and its legal source. This database is used to make a first analysis of mining tax regimes and rent sharing in the main gold-producing countries. The first results highlight the heterogeneity of tax regimes between English-speaking and French-speaking countries. There has been a convergence of the average effective tax rates across most of the countries, the effective tax rate has increased in most countries following the tax reforms undertaken since 2010.The database is downloadable following the link :http://www.ferdi.fr/en/node/3198.

The lack of information about the sharing of mining resource rent between governments and investors is an easy statement to make for Africa. The existing datasets are often insufficient for a deep analysis of African tax law as applied to the natural resource sectors, which has limited the academic and operational approaches. This paper describes the first legal and tax database which specifies the tax regime applied to industrial gold mining companies in 14 African gold-producing countries from 1980 to 2015. The database has three major innovations: (i) an inventory of taxes and duties (rate, base and exemptions) payable during the prospecting phase and mining phase of a gold project; (ii) a new detailed historical record covering 1980 to 2015; (iii) the link between each piece of tax information and its legal source. This database is used to make a first analysis of mining tax regimes and rent sharing in the main gold-producing countries. The first results highlight the heterogeneity of tax regimes between English-speaking and French-speaking countries. There has been a convergence of the average effective tax rates across most of the countries, the effective tax rate has increased in most countries following the tax reforms undertaken since 2010.The database is downloadable following the link :http://www.ferdi.fr/en/node/3198.

This paper analyzes the socioeconomic, fiscal, and governance impact of gold mining in Mali. The analysis finds that, at the national level, mining plays an important role by contributing to export earnings and overall government fiscal revenue. In 2013, the mining sector represented 7 percent of gross domestic product, contributed 1.5 percent to growth in total gross domestic product, and accounted for 65 percent of total export earnings and 25 percent of total government budget revenues. At the local level, despite higher population growth, there is some evidence that outcomes (poverty and infrastructure services) are marginally better in mining communes compared with non-mining communes. Local governments receive fiscal windfalls that are spent significantly on education capital expenditures and current expenditures (salaries and non-salaries). Non-salary current expenditures are 10 times higher in mining areas. Analysis of the political economy of public service provision at the local level suggests that technical or absorptive capacities may be the bottleneck to increasing the local benefit of mining instead of corruption or accountability.

To ensure sustainable long-term functioning, modern mining enterprises must constantly increase not only efficiency, but also ensure safety at every stage of the technological process and conduct professional risk assessments in accordance with the requirements of modern legislation. Any production process is a complex of various technological operations that carry certain risks and dangers that can, to one degree or another, cause harm to the life and health of personnel

The current economic crisis in Venezuela has drawn members of Pemón communities to the practice of informal (illegal) gold mining, as mining, undertaken alongside other 'traditional' economic activities, is a more effective source of income than waged jobs. The increased involvement of Pemón people in informal mining has encouraged their partial retreat from the state's frontiers, and it reveals transformations in the ways in which local people imagine and relate to the Venezuelan state. These transformations are embodied in both a reorganisation of the space, and in burgeoning notions of land ownership.

Ecological and Economic Zoning (EEZ) is a Land Use Planning (LUP) methodology that aims at defining separate areas for productive uses and conservation. EEZ is designed as a method that balances different interests and it devises land use policy through stakeholder participation, technical expertise and GIS modelling. The article presents the case study of EEZ in Cajamarca, Peru to analyse the LUP process in a situation of conflicting interests over future land and water use. Cajamarca is a department with rich gold deposits in the headwater catchment area upstream of the city of Cajamarca. During the last decade, rural communities and urban populations have continuously protested against the opening of new open pit mines, as they fear this will affect their water supply. Therefore, the EEZ process became part of a controversy between a powerful pro-mining coalition lead by the central government and a conservation coalition lead by the regional government. We conclude that in these circumstances, LUP cannot, technically or politically, accommodate the different values attributed to the headwater catchment.

AbstractThis article maps the contentious forms of political life that emerge when multicultural rights and non-formal gold extraction coincide. Specifically, it shows how, in the Colombian department of Chocó, Afro-descendant community councils have produced a unique form of mining governance that, while depending for its legitimacy on everyday uses of Afro-Colombian legislation, consists of the organisation, taxation and policing of mining activities that are in tension with official notions of extractive and multicultural law. In exploring such 'underground' cultural politics, the article highlights the limits of state-centric analyses of 'neoliberal multiculturalism' and, accordingly, underscores the instrumental role that governed subjects play in the on-the-ground unfolding of multicultural governance regimes.

I combine fieldwork photography and ethnographic documentation of gold mining in Madre de Dios, Peru, to examine the localized material, social, environmental, and health outcomes of the global gold boom. This 'theoretical photo essay' examines how local and global forces coalesce around gold mining and influence peoples and environments in Western Amazonia. I use embodiment theory in anthropology, ecological economics, and theories of underdevelopment to understand local consequences of the global gold trade and to elucidate how opulence and the machinations of capital accumulation in economic centers of the world occur at the expense of human lives and environments in the hinterlands. Building on this analysis, I draw upon the Marxian concepts of mystification and fetishization to show how the rationale and language invoked in discourses about the gold boom in Madre de Dios work to obscure interconnections between the devastating local consequences of the global gold trade and the unequal economic global system of exchange that unevenly distributes profits and risks.

AbstractThe financial and economic strengths of the early Islamic state have been a source of ongoing speculation, causing some scholars to even question medieval Makkah's economic reason to exist. This article explores the role of precious metals - gold and silver - in lending vitality to the economy of Western Arabia in the formative years of the Dar al-Islam . Combining primary source evidence with artifacts and qualitative and quantitative analysis of mining residuals, including carbon 14 dating, it produces evidence suggesting that such metals played a far more significant role in contemporary commerce and industry than has been heretofore generally acknowledged.