Many countries badly mismanage their natural resource endowments. We argue that a fundamental change in paradigm is needed. Specifically, we advocate treating non-renewable natural resources as a finite shared inheritance asset, and extraction as the sale of the inherited wealth. We identify...

Norway’s management of its North Sea oil endowment, especially its future generations Oil Fund, is considered the global best practice. Some practice aspects such as no flaring of gas or a moderate pace of extraction go against standard economic theory. The public trust doctrine in law...

Hartwick’s rule says that as mineral resources are extracted from the ground, investments in productive assets need to be made to leave future generations with as much assets as the present generation. This article examines whether mining in Goa meets Hartwick’s rule, and finds that the...

The System of National Accounts 2008 (SNA) and the Government Finance Statistics Manual 2014 (GFSM) are undergoing revision to better capture the extraction of mineral assets. We discuss current practices and the proposed changes and argue that they give a misleading picture of governments’...