Read on Twitter
Few thoughts on what just happened to Tom. We met very briefly a few years back in Maputo when @pl_vezina and I were presenting our work on the consequences of Mozambique's offshore gas discoveries in 2009. It is scary how predictable this was... https://twitter.com/TomBowk/status/1361665990317256704
In 2017, when we met Tom, while presenting the preliminary results of our work, it did look like Mozambique's economy was about to take off economically since the gas discoveries caused an FDI bonanza and triggered the creation of many jobs ( https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/rest_a_00999).
Unfortunately, already at the time when @pl_vezina and I went to Maputo, information started reaching the public about Mozambique's government officials borrowing money on the people’s behalf, while using the gas discoveries as a collateral.
Eventually it became clear that the political elite was involved in a corruption scandal of huge proportions, which had devastating economic consequences by significantly reducing Mozambique's growth potential...before the extraction of gas even began!
@davidmihalyi and @jimcust suggest that this is not just be specific to Mozambique and that many newly resource rich economies do seem to have similar experiences ( http://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/517431499697641884/pdf/WPS8140.pdf).
The idea that resource abundance and economic underperformance are related is not new. But, what appears incredible in the case of Mozambique, I think, is that one of the people involved in the publicly known corruption scandal has been elected into power and is now president.
@paulnovosad and @thesamasher have a very nice paper on this issue, in which they show that local mineral rent shocks in India cause the election of politicians charged with serious crimes ( http://paulnovosad.com/pdf/asher-novosad-mining-politics.pdf).
This suggests that people seem to actually ELECT "bad" people into power who are then, OF COURSE, more likely to do "bad" things. For instance, the repression of the freedom of the press, which is presumably why Tom needs to leave the country!
I am sharing this for many reasons. Partly because it is part of my research agenda and partly because I live and care about a country which is greatly affected by this.
But, most importantly, I think that we need to understand better how bad people end up in power and how this can be avoided. Appears like a huge research agenda and I am sure that there are already amazing papers out there which I am simply not aware of. Please share!
Just realised that "share" could have at least two different meanings in this context. I mean that I would appreciate if you would share with me if you are aware of papers addressing such issues. :-)
