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A regional resource curse? A synthetic-control approach to oil extraction in Basilicata, Italy

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  • Pellegrini, Lorenzo
  • Tasciotti, Luca
  • Spartaco, Andrea

Abstract

Basilicata is a region of Southern Italy where the expansion of oil operations in the 1990s was promoted as an opportunity to foster economic development. Flash-forward to 2020, Basilicata is one of the poorest regions in Italy despite the exploitation of some of the largest onshore hydrocarbon reserves within the European Union. The coincidence of high poverty rates with abundant natural resources suggests that the region is experiencing a ‘resource curse’; however, socio-economic problems predate the oil boom, complicating any causality claim. To disentangle and estimate the effects of oil exploitation, we employ the synthetic control method that compares the actual trends of development indicators of Basilicata with a counterfactual that is created by taking a weighted average of trends of other Italian regions –a ‘synthetic’ Basilicata.

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  • Pellegrini, Lorenzo & Tasciotti, Luca & Spartaco, Andrea, 2021. "A regional resource curse? A synthetic-control approach to oil extraction in Basilicata, Italy," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:185:y:2021:i:c:s0921800921000999
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107041
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    4. Lorenzo Pellegrini & Murat Arsel & Gorka Muñoa & Guillem Rius-Taberner & Carlos Mena & Martí Orta-Martínez, 2024. "The atlas of unburnable oil for supply-side climate policies," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-13, December.
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    8. Franklin Obeng-Odoom, 2023. "Spatial political economy: the case of metropolitan industrial policy," Review of Evolutionary Political Economy, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 137-163, April.

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