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Natural resource governance: does social media matter?

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Abstract

In this paper, we study the relationship between communication and “transparency of information” and governance by exploring the link between social media and natural resource governance. Using a cross-country analysis, we document a robust and statistically significant positive relationship between Facebook penetration (a proxy for social media) and natural resource governance. It follows that countries with higher social media levels enjoy natural resource governance of better quality than countries with low levels of social media. The positive effect of social media is robust to controlling for other determinants of institutional quality, additional controls, and outliers, inter alia.

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Notes

  1. All details reported here are from de www.revenuewatch.org/rgi

  2. Institutional and legal setting: The extent to which laws, regulations, and institutional arrangements facilitate transparency, accountability, and fair competition.

    Reporting practices: The actual disclosure of information by public bodies.

    Safeguards and quality controls: The presence and quality of control and supervision mechanisms that promote integrity and protect against conflicts of interest.

    Enabling environment: State of governance as a whole, based on more than 30 external measures of accountability, government effectiveness, rule of law, corruption, and democracy.

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Kodila-Tedika, O. Natural resource governance: does social media matter?. Miner Econ 34, 127–140 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13563-020-00234-3

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