Golden Opportunities: Mining, Production Linkages, and Firm Development

This replication package accompanies Bai and Li, “Golden Opportunities: Mining, Production Linkages, and Firm Development” (Economic Modelling). It reproduces all tables and figures in the paper from the shipped analysis file data/processed/data_regression.dta by running main.do (Stata 17+; packages: reghdfe, ftools, estout, coefplot, winsor2). The analysis links World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES) firms in 26 African countries to distance-band exposure to active and inactive gold mines, and estimates firm fixed-effects regressions for sales, employment, productivity, trade, labor composition, and business-environment outcomes. Restricted or proprietary inputs are not redistributed: WBES firm GPS coordinates (World Bank special request) and S&P Global mine microdata. In their place the package provides (i) a structure-preserving pseudo GPS file and (ii) processed, coordinate-free firm–mine exposure matrices and the analysis dataset, so the default path runs end-to-end. Open macro covariates (WDI / SPI) are included. Source notes, acquisition paths, and folder instructions are in README.md.