 All right, thank you very much Antonio So in this work, we try to focus on the relationship between natural resource dependence and Tax revenue outcomes in resource-rich countries, right? And we try to ask the question about what kinds of institutions matter now When you see this map here One thing stands out. It's the fact that The phase of developing countries is really one of commodity dependence All right So you can see that for many of the developing countries in South South South South Africa in South America and so on We see that the share of commodity exports as a percentage of total merchandise exports is in excess of 60 percent Right if you take a country like a Gola or Azerbaijan Just full exports alone exceeds 90 percent of total commodity exports Like Antonio rightly introduced She will be concerned about that in the phase of the discussion of the natural resource cares, right? So this is an ongoing debate and one can read at least three streams of the literature. Okay one that suggests that natural resource Dependence or availability Does not help in terms of development outcomes. Okay, and the variety of outcomes can be looked at There's another strand that suggests a positive effect that natural resource constitutes some natural capital It consists an endowment that can be translated to improving outcomes and Then there's a third strand that suggests that well the Impact of natural resource dependence on development outcomes is Conditional on a set of factors and I think that our work is to test within this this this third stream now if you look at the figure here, we look at the relationship between natural resource rent as a natural resource rent as a share of GDP and Total non resource taxation so this is taxation outside the natural resource sector as a share of GDP The scatterplot suggests a negative relationship right and indeed there is this whole Strand of the resource case the rich adults are the new fiscal resource cares right and the argument is that well Natural resource dependence Could undermine the ability of countries to mobilize taxes from a broad base, right? And the extremes of work that a number of studies that that look at that Well, if this evidence is the case then there are two challenges, right if natural resource Dependence actually undermines tax capacity or fiscal capacity The first is that well if these natural resources are non-renewable There's a problem because non-renewable resources have a time horizon, right? And if they are no longer available then domestic revenue mobilization can be challenged The second has to do with the fact that if natural resource dependence actually undermines taxation There's a governance issue and there's a long held established literature about the role of taxation in building state capacity Okay in improving governance and sustainable development Now what we try to do then is also to reflect on the new institutional literature that suggests that well The quality of institutions can play a role in shaping economies so North suggests that Institutions are the rule of the game institutions actually shape incentives. They constrain behavior So if you look at the work of a assemble group for instance this famous 2001 paper suggests that you know Quality institutions, you know can deliver long-term development in that respect. We try to ask herself whether the quality of institutions in the country Mitigates the adverse effect of natural resource dependence on tax revenue mobilization and Then we try to find out what types of institutions Matter right because there are different types of institutions one can reflect on political institutions economic institutions and so on and so forth and I'll give examples of a few shortly So in essence we try to contribute to and a number of strands to the literature that is a literature on building fiscal capacity You know across a resource rich countries We also try to look at the discussion on the relationship between natural resource dependence and Building tax capacity. Okay, and whether they actually this is a complementary relationship or this actually Substituted a relationship but more importantly, I think that our work is to this quality in trying to understand the role of Quality of institutions in improving tax revenue outcomes, which people many people in this room Have contributed to Roberto Antonio amongst others Now I will engage in a brief third car discussion in terms of approach We try to look at use panel data Okay, so we use panel data regression methods and I'll not go much into this maybe during the discussion We can go into the details and then we'll try to draw from 12 measures of institutional quality You know some of which have been commonly used in the literature Okay, so data is for about a hundred countries for a period from 1980 to 2015 Now again, if you take The figures we have here at least figure two and three We see that Botswana Collects fairly fairly reasonable level of resource revenues, right? But if you also look at non resource tax as a percentage of GDP, they do not do badly Okay, so you see that we see we see that the it's it's it's fairly been increasing over the period Okay, not not that bad But let's look at another country in Nigeria We see the trends Quite high although it's been fluctuating, but in terms of non resource taxation It's virtually flat if not decreasing over time, right? now What account for the different parts, you know for for these different countries? There could be different factors But as I said, we'll try to look at the role of the quality of institutions. Okay, and And why is that important? Well? states according to the public trust doctrine mobilized and hold resources in trust for the citizens in That sense they have that power they would authority in terms of determining the fiscal regime in place determining how to mobilize Revenues, but also even how to distribute rents Now this power to explore or this power to distribute rents Can however be constrained by other branches or other state institutions either the legislature or the Judiciary depending on the strength of these other state institutions now if there is adequate or effective constraints on the government On the executive branch One can expect that some of the concerns that was raised raising today's keynote expanded today's keynote address by Hanan mossy About, you know excessive tax exemptions, you know tax expenditure that actually Constraint the ability of countries to mobilize enough tax revenue Can't be checked in a reasonable manner, right because government executive branch cannot just you know grant these Tax incentives without a formula, you know without a policy One can also look at the role of democracies versus autocracies The situation in an autocratic state and an autocratic government can be quite different from what we can find in a democratic state and and an example That comes to mind is Saudi Arabia's experience in the 1970s. So in the 1970s when there was spike in oil prices there were billions of dollars streaming into the country and Within a year the government decided to shut down the department for mobilizing tax revenues giving the inflows in in in in the oil dollars, right But in in the democracy one would expect that this would be less so if they are checks and balances in the system Hey, so we try to look at this the role of of these these political institutions But of course the other types of institutions in a country where there is an adequate protection of property rights Or whether the social institutions and gender, you know a trust one can expect that that would be an Instinct that will create incentives for investment Which by and large can widen the tax base So for even the existing tax rate an increase in production or investment can generate more revenues, right? So the quality of economic institutions another type of institution could be could be important here And that's why we explore a number of institutions. So 12 different types of institutions to try to understand Whether they mitigate the adverse effect of natural resource dependence on the ability of countries to mobilize non-resource taxes, right? So these are just some examples and because of a time I may not have to go through and each of them But what are the what what what is the summary of what we find first of all we find? evidence of a conditional Hypothesis where resource case hypothesis hypothesis, right in the sense that we see that the quality of institutions Institutions can mitigate or moderate the adverse effect of natural resource dependence or non-resource tax revenues and Here we see a significant case for political institutions relative to the other types of institutions that we explore Okay, but in addition to that our resource suggests that While political institutions are important other factors are also a camp can play a complementary role, right? And we will look at this shortly So let me just take you through One of the many figures that we have in tables, but I'll just focus on them Two of them and and then we can move on. So these figures basically predicts the effect of natural resource dependence on Non-resource taxes at different levels of institutional quality, right? So we have two different types of institutions and if you go through we see that the Adverse effect of natural resource dependence is constrained by you know, for instance the constraint look at figure two We see that as the quality of institutions improve as the constraint on executive power Increases or is higher. We see that it mitigates the adverse effect of Natural resource dependence on non-resource tax Revenues and we see the case for for the the democracy variable as well But not so much for other types of of institutions, right? So for instance property, right? We don't see a very strong strong effect now We do several checks using these Institutional variables for instance. We look at a short run. We look at the medium term And then also in the long run And in each case we find that, you know, political institutions are very important We also explore alternative estimation strategies We do other robustness checks by dropping out lies some might be concerned that if you include countries like Saudi Arabia in the sample You might be accounting for these these out lies. So we drop these out lies and we see still see a fairly consistent pattern Which is a fact that the quality of institutions or political institutions are important for improving tax revenue Outcomes and indeed we find that that beyond just electoral competitiveness or legislative competitiveness We find that constraint on executive power is more salient in this in this relationship Whilst other complementary factors need not be ignored and here we see the role for Economic growth broadening the base, you know of the economy and then trade as other important explanatory factors. This is also confirmed by other work done by Yepsen and other colleagues actually participating in in this conference For instance, Yepsen suggests that in the case of South South Africa Okay The the lack of fiscal states in in South South Africa come to a large extent be explained by the absence of economic preconditions, right? emphasizing the role of The economy, you know, which basically represents the base of of taxation Along these factors, we also see the role of informality So we find that countries were a large share of the economy is dominated by the agricultural sector We see that they are constrained in terms of mobilizing and non-resource taxation and so and Agriculture as a share of GDP also is sometimes used in the literature to represent the level of informality and that is is is therefore an issue that Developing countries or resource rich countries need to give attention to in again in today's keynote address There were reflections on for instance Improving The use of digitalization or technology for instance In addressing consents about informality. So in a nutshell our work suggests that The quality of political institutions are important Countries that are dependent on natural resources Need not suffer a curse in terms of the ability to mobilize taxes from a more sustainable base and that Quality of institutions could play a mitigating role alongside other complementary Factors I think I'll end here and we can have the discussion. Yeah