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2. Labor Market Nationalization Policies and Firm Outcomes: Evidence from Saudi Arabia
- Author:
- Patricia Cortes, Semiray Kasoolu, and Carolina Pan
- Publication Date:
- 07-2020
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Saudi Arabia is home to the world’s third largest migrant population. Under mounting pressure to increase the private sector employment of Saudis during the last decade, a series of nationalization policies on the labor force have been imposed since late 2011. In this paper, we study how the first nationalization policy, Nitaqat, affected the overall labor market and non-oil firms in the private sector, especially exporting firms. Our rich and novel data allow us to assess the effect of the policy on a wide set of outcomes: employment decisions by composition and size, the output and productivity of exporting firms, labor costs, and exit from the market. Using a difference-in-difference analysis, we compare the 2011 to 2012 change in outcomes between firms above and firms below the threshold required for the minimum share of Saudi workers in a firm. Our results suggest that the policy succeeded in encouraging firms to increase the share of Saudis in private firms. It also increased the share of Saudi women in the workforce, suggesting that the policy had a positive effect on increasing female labor force participation. However, these gains came at a very high cost to firms: our findings suggest that the policy led to a reduced firm size, reduced productivity and output of exporting firms, increased wage bill, increased share of low-skilled Saudi workers, and higher firm exit rates.
- Topic:
- Business, Labor Market, and Nationalization
- Political Geography:
- Saudi Arabia and Gulf Nations
3. Are Politics Local? The Two Dimensions of Party Nationalization around the World, Scott Morgenstern
- Author:
- Arjan H. Schakel
- Publication Date:
- 07-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Political Science Quarterly
- Institution:
- Academy of Political Science
- Abstract:
- The statement that geography matters for politics probably will not be contested by many political scientists. Therefore, it is quite surprising that few studies have systematically explored how the territorial distribution of preferences affects political processes and policy outcomes. This book by Scott Morgenstern is an important landmark study that puts geography high on the research agenda of comparative political science. Three features make this book worthwhile reading for scholars working on the nationalization of elections and parties. First, Morgenstern identifies two dimensions of party nationalization and shows that they are theoretically and empirically unrelated. Static nationalization refers to the extent to which party vote shares are homogeneously distributed across districts at a particular point in time. Dynamic nationalization taps into the consistency in the change of a party’s vote shares across time. The combination of these two dimensions leads to a useful fourfold categorization of nationalized, unstable, unbalanced, and locally focused parties. As Morgenstern shows in Chapters 7, 8, and 9, each type of party has different implications for electoral accountability and bill co-sponsorship among legislators.
- Topic:
- Politics, Book Review, Political Science, Political Parties, and Nationalization
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
4. Energy Security: Meeting the Growing Challenge of National Oil Companies
- Author:
- Matthew E. Chen and Amy Myers Jaffe
- Publication Date:
- 09-2007
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations
- Institution:
- School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton Hall University
- Abstract:
- Last February, Hugo Chavez decreed a staged nationalization in a drive to take over large segments of the Venezuelan economy as part of his revolutionary vision for the country. Specifically, the Chavez government set its sights on the oil industry, giving notice to foreign oil companies—including US firms—that they had until June 26 to reduce their ownership in Venezuelan Orinoco Belt heavy oil field projects so that the state could take at least a 60 percent share. This year alone, the Venezuelan government has already formed the Venezuelan Electricity Corporation, comprised of all state electricity utilities, to ensure state control of the electricity sector. It has also initiated the takeover of CANTV, the country’s biggest telecommunications operator. Chavez also has threatened to nationalize Venezuela’s banking sector unless banks “give priority to financing [the country’s] industrial sectors.”1 Commenting on his drive for “21st century socialism,” the president said that “I’m not deceiving anyone. I’m only governing the country, and the country has elected me various times. ...All of those who voted for me backed socialism, and that is where we are heading.”2 Venezuelan Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez threatened in early May that US oil giant ConocoPhillips would be kicked out of Venezuela altogether if it tried to drive a hard bargain for turning over shares in its fields in the Orinoco Belt. The official US reaction has been muted. On May 1, 2007, US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Venezuela’s negotiations with oil companies “will proceed as they will,” but that Chavez’s broader actions, including withdrawing from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, were “digging a hole for the Venezuelan people.”3 The US has a long tradition of circumspect responses to the moves of national oil companies. The US has responded tepidly to many moves since the 1930s when Mexico nationalized the oil field holdings of US oil companies. In the case of Mexico, the US had other foreign policy priorities at the time of these nationalizations, first the fight against Nazism and then the struggle to keep communism out of the hemisphere. Thus, despite lodging diplomatic protests and rebuking Mexico with mild economic penalties, the US did not allow the incident to damage bilateral relations in the face of greater strategic challenges.4 Similarly, the US government did not interfere with Venezuela’s 1976 nationalization, for which the international oil companies received compensation.5 The United States was even passive as recently as the 1980s, when Saudi Arabia implemented the gradual nationalization of the American oil company stakes in the Aramco Oil concession. US-Saudi relations were relatively strong in the 1980s and into the 1990s, and the US government made no objections whatsoever to Saudi Arabia’s nationalization of Aramco’s oil assets.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Oil, Nationalization, and Energy Security
- Political Geography:
- South America and Venezuela
5. Natural Gas and Inequality in Bolivia after Nationalization
- Author:
- Lykke E. Andersen, Johann Caro, Robert Faris, and Mauricio Medinaceli
- Publication Date:
- 08-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for Advanced Development Studies (INESAD)
- Abstract:
- The high oil prices and the sharp increases in royalties mean that the natural gas boom in Bolivia has become very important for the economy. This paper uses a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model to assess the impacts of this boom on key macroeconomic variables as well as the distribution of incomes in the society. From a macroeconomic perspective, the natural gas boom is a blessing, adding around 1 percentage point to GDP growth rates for at least a decade, and sharply increasing government revenues available for public spending and investment. However, the poorest segments of the population (rural small-holders and urban informals) suffer actual reductions in their real incomes, compared to the counterfactual scenario without the gas boom. This means that the natural gas boom not only causes an increase in inequality but also an increase in poverty. The paper finishes with some policy recommendations on how to counteract the negative side effects of the natural gas boom.
- Topic:
- Gas, Inequality, Macroeconomics, and Nationalization
- Political Geography:
- South America and Bolivia