Mining, deaths, and dropouts

Paper by Ryan EdwardsDiscussant: Kimlong Chheng

Crawford PhD Conference04, November, 2013

Crawford SchoolThe Australian National University

General comments

• The paper examines impacts of mining on health and education outcomes using cross-country empirical analysis.

• Key issues, policy relevant, scope-bound.

• The modelling framework and analytical methods applied are clear and well-balanced.

• The study contributes to development and investment policy literature.

• One last point, the paper incorporates some test methods in an attempt to validate the significance of the test results.

• However, the issues with causality inferences remain to be treated with some caution.

The model

Strengths of the paper

• Large sample size and a long period of time

• Variation in specifications and functional forms, i.e., log-log, log-level, cross-sectional, and differing panels of data

• Treatment of the omitted variable bias issues and attempt for robustness checks

• Treatment of endogeneity issues

• Attempt to external validity

Some minor points on shortcomings

• The paper has yet to explain the mechanisms through which or why mining impacts the health and education outcomes and the choice of some variables of interest.

• It appears 20-year differences is quite long the interval, due multiplicity of unobservable effects and heterogeneity in outcome variables.

Suggestions

More explanation on:

1. Identification strategy

2. The mechanisms through which mining affects health and education outcomes based on the test results

3. The variable instrumentation, i.e., how the instrumental variable is chosen, and choice of the institutional variables