The issue of regional economic disparities is important for the Republic of Kazakhstan, which is going through a transition period from a planned socialist system to a market-based economy. This presents a large number of problems for a government seeking to balance development in order to avoid problems of inequality and political unrest and, at present, there is a shortage of the type of information that would be useful to formulate policy. The main aim of this thesis is to help make up some of this gap. It does so by examining various types of convergence process across the regions of Kazakhstan over the period of 1993-2009. Since different types of convergence reflect different aspects of the problem, we use a variety of concepts and empirical approaches in studying convergence across Kazakhstan's regions. First, we approach convergence directly by studying the dynamics of standard deviation and coefficient of variation of per capita GRP level across Kazakhstan's regions, which is called -convergence. Next, we study absolute and conditional -convergence using cross-section and panel approaches. Afterwards, we study the club-convergence proposing an approach that consists of two stages: clustering of regions and testing convergence within clusters. In studying TFP convergence, we use panel unit root tests. In addition, we apply the method of sector decomposition to reveal economic sectors, which promote either convergence or divergence across the Kazakhstan regions. The results of this thesis show that, in general, regions of Kazakhstan diverged over the period of 1993-2009 in the sense of -convergence and absolute -convergence. However, they demonstrated convergence in other recognised forms of convergence (conditional -convergence, TFP-convergence, club-convergence) over various time spans within the 1993-2009 period. For the government this means that convergence in Kazakhstan is not per se a process that accompanies economic development and that a strong regional policy is needed. In order to reduce economic disparities and preserve high rates of economic growth this policy should be complicated, club-specific, and directed to the equalization of production structure of regions and targeting the sectors promoting convergence.

This thesis consists of five stand-alone chapters empirically evaluating questions relating to the life cycle of natural resource extraction. We use three different data sets to shed light on the local impacts of natural resource booms and busts. In chapter 2 to 4 we use the household budget survey of Kazakhstan to explore the impacts of the oil boom on the local population. In the second chapter, we explore the distributional effects of the oil boom and show that average household income increased and income inequality decreased. In the third chapter we study how the increase in average income was perceived by the local population and find that households' satisfaction with income decreased. In the fourth chapter we study how the boom affected households' expenditure and show that the likelihood that households pay tuition fees for tertiary education increased. In chapter 5, we explore the long-term impacts of a negative labour demand shock following the coal mine closures in the UK. To do this we construct a new data set containing the location of all active coal mines since 1981 and link it to the UK census. We find that the dramatic lay off of miners since 1981 was associated with a persistent reduction in female labour force participation in the affected districts. In chapter 6, we study the determinants of drilling costs and their impact on the real price of oil using a new global data set on the number of exploration wells drilled and costs of drilling. To do this, we propose a structural model of the upstream sector in the oil and gas industry. The model allows us to decompose the variation in the reduced form errors of the estimated VAR into three structural shocks, and estimate the dynamic responses of the variables in the system to these shocks. We confirm that the upstream sector of the oil and gas industry is subject to increasing costs. But we do not find that the real oil price is permanently affected by shocks to costs of drilling.

How do we account for foreign firms that are successful in politically “risky” countries? While traditional political risk indices may tell us why a country is considered a difficult operating environment, they tell us very little about why some foreign firms are nevertheless able to operate successfully in such countries over long periods of time. In fact, risk indices by their very nature make “success” almost impossible to capture due to their sole focus on “host country” behavior. Rather, as this thesis argues, the political risk is in the relationship between the firm and a series of stakeholders within a given country, not the country itself. This is a thesis of deviant cases: it holds the “successful relationship” between a foreign firm and its stakeholders as the constant dependent variable in the “significantly risky” country of Kazakhstan. Success is defined as the ability of each actor to pursue its own goals to a self-satisfactory degree, with the resources an actor mobilizes to achieve those goals and the constraints that restrict those resources as the independent variables. Three self-contained cases of “successful” foreign mining firms operating in Kazakhstan are analyzed here to determine the distinct causal pathways that led each firm to seeming “success”; the thesis then pivots to a between-subjects examination aimed at drawing out the common themes among the three different foreign firms. Within international relations theory, the relationship between the foreign firm and its stakeholders is considered here as a window into the intersection of the international political economy and the domestic political economy of a country in transition, but critically, allotting agents and structures equal ontological status. Thus the ultimate aim of this investigation is to enrich our understanding of social behavior – here, co-existence – within the context of the agent- structure debate in larger social scientific inquiry.