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Uncertainty in the Resource Industries: The Special Role of State-owned Enterprises

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Risk and the Political Economy of Resource Development
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Abstract

Since the remote era when King Solomon’s slaves mined copper from the Negev desert, large-scale ventures in oil and minerals have produced intermittent periods of feast and famine for their owners. In the past hundred years, the owners of such enterprises, government or private, have engaged in unremitting efforts to reduce price fluctuations and stabilise the demand for their output. Some of those efforts have seemed at times to enjoy a certain success. The vast changes in the structure of the crude-oil market in 1930–60, for instance, were managed with remarkably few upsets. And until the last decade or two, the stability of the aluminium industry and the sulphur industry were legendary.

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© 1984 David W. Pearce, Horst Siebert and Ingo Walter

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Vernon, R. (1984). Uncertainty in the Resource Industries: The Special Role of State-owned Enterprises. In: Pearce, D.W., Siebert, H., Walter, I. (eds) Risk and the Political Economy of Resource Development. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-06980-4_13

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