Buying Stability: The Distributive Outcomes of Firm Responses to Risk in the Bolivian Mining Industry
Location: Leacock Building, room 232
Date & Time: 12:30 - 2:00 pm
The Institute for the Study of International Development is pleased to present Dr. Matthew Amengual, Maurice F. Strong Career Development Professor and Associate Professor, Work and Organization Studies Group, MIT Sloan School of Management, to present: Buying Stability: The Distributive Outcomes of Firm Responses to Risk in the Bolivian Mining Industry. This is part of ISID's International Development Speaker Series.
About the talk:
Firms operating in developing countries where institutions are weak must bargain directly with a range of societal actors who can credibly threaten to disrupt economic activity. To prevent opposition, some firms provide public goods and services broadly, while others target benefits towards a few strategically important allies. In countries where states under-supply basic public goods and services, non-state provision plays an important political and developmental role. Under what conditions do firms join states and increase access to essential public goods and services? This article explores this question through a study of subnational variation in the Bolivian mining industry, drawing on qualitative data from interviews as well as an original household survey. It shows that multinational firms respond to varying incentives that arise from differences in the social and political groups that challenge them; firms become more likely to provide benefits broadly when threatened by, or building coalitions with, encompassing societal organizations. This finding contributes to studies of the politics of weak institutions and the non-state provision of public goods and services, as well as the local resource curse.
