Addressing the growth and employment effects of the extractive industries: white and black box illustrations from Kazakhstan

ABSTRACT

This survey addresses production and employment effects, which emanate from the extractive industries of Kazakhstan. To this end, the study employs static input-output models (IOMs) of Kazakhstan for the years 2007, 2010, 2012, and 2017 and dynamic nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) models for the period 1995–2018. IOMs show that extractives in Kazakhstan exhibit relatively strong links to domestic manufacturing. NARDL estimators reveal a positive relationship between commodity revenues and manufacturing value added in the commodity revenue boom phase and a high level of resilience of Kazakh manufacturing to the downward movements of the commodity revenues. Commodity revenues have a statistically significant positive impact on the aggregate employment rate. The study does not detect asymmetries concerning the job creation effects of extractives in the manufacturing sector.

KEYWORDS:

• Commodity revenues
• input-output model
• multicollinearity
• employment effects
• sovereign wealth fund
• linkage effects
• enclave industry
• Kazakhstan

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Wilhelm Loewenstein from Ruhr-University, Bochum for inspiring me to conduct this survey, his insightful suggestions and constructive critique. I am also grateful to Gabriele Bäcker from Ruhr University Bochum, Kamiar Mohaddes from the University of Cambridge, the managing editor Richard Connolly, and two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.