The SARChI Chair recently published the following journal article in RoAPE:
Sharife, K., & Bracking, S. (2016). Diamond pricing and valuation in South Africa’s extractive political economy. Review of African Political Economy, 1-20.
ABSTRACT
This article explores the valuation and marketisation of diamonds in South Africa from 2004 to 2012. It argues that there is no positivist foundation for a ‘real’ or ‘fair’ price from which derogations can be measured, which constitutes a challenge for establishing transfer pricing in the context of tax justice. Instead, there is a performative valuation process wherein artificial underlying values are assigned which then condition prices and tax liabilities. Thus it is not the essential nature of diamonds per se that conditions a ‘resource curse’, but corporate control over the marketisation process in the context of enclavity and oligopoly.