Tammy Warner Campson

Here I am interviewing fishermen in Pemba, Tanzania. That’s me in the red shirt.

Research

My research interests lie at the intersection of natural resource economics, development economics, and business process theory. I am interested how people can use their endowment of resources to improve their lives in the present and for the future. I am especially interested in applying business process models to organizations that are charged with conserving resources, in the hope that a focus on efficiency and long-term financial sustainability can help resource managers to do their jobs more effectively.

 

 

Dissertation abstract:

 

Managing for sustainability: the economics of Marine Protected Areas

 

In recent years, Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) have become increasingly common management tools in the ocean environment, with ambitious goals potentially including the conservation of marine resources, the enhancement, maintenance, or recovery of fisheries, and the empowerment of local people. In order for MPAs to sustain themselves, however, they need to make economic sense. Policy makers and MPA managers need to understand the incentives facing various stakeholders, and they need to be able to make a realistic case for the economic viability of their (existing or proposed) projects. MPA performance outcomes must be understood, and the drivers of various aspects of MPA performance must be quantified.

 

                 An empirical study of the factors affecting performance outcomes of MPAs  will provide data that can be used to understand these incentives. With this data, we will develop and test alternative models of MPA performance. Using existing MPA economic models, institutional economics, conservation economics, and business process models as a starting point, we will adapt the models as needed in order to generate useful insights for policy makers, MPA managers and others interested in the sustainable management of marine resources.

 

Research-in-progress:

 

Factors Influencing Economic Growth in Natural Resource Dependent Economies

 

The goal of this paper is to revisit the influential work of Sachs and Warner (1995) focusing on the strength of their results under alternative model specifications. Sachs and Warner utilize straightforward OLS to examine the impact of resource dependence on economic growth and find that there is a negative relationship, providing evidence of the so-called “resource curse”. Subsequent authors have questioned Sachs and Warner’s results with empirical studies of their own, however, none of these studies incorporates both resource and international macroeconomic data in a comprehensive way. Using panel data on both renewable and non-renewable resource extraction, exchange rate regimes, international capital flows, and indebtedness, the present paper indicates that the resource curse operates differently under different macroeconomic conditions.

 

Secure coastal communities

 

This paper examines the relationships between natural resources and violence in the developing world. A substantial body of literature links natural resources to violence, through mechanisms involving both resource abundance and resource scarcity. Whatever the mechanism, it is apparent that violence related to natural resources is on the rise. Most empirical studies on the resource-violence link have focused on large-scale civil conflicts involving non-renewable resources. The present paper will use newly available data on conflict over fisheries in coastal communities to test the macro-level links identified in the existing literature against micro-level data.