GOLDATA: The Gold deposits dataset Codebook

Empirical observation of recent civil conflict events suggests a correlation between gold exploitation, conflict dynamics and military financing. Conflict literature recognizes a prominent role to gold as it holds many characteristics that make it a lootable and profitable resource for any belligerent group which is able to collect revenues from its exploitation. Gold, indeed, has a high economic value; it is an accessible and diffuse resource which makes it more difficult to be controlled by government forces. Despite such evidence, the potential influence of gold exploitation on armed civil conflicts has not been empirically investigated in a proper way. GOLDATA is an original geo-referenced dataset on gold occurrences which has been designed in order to enrich spatial analysis about the role of natural resources on conflict events and dynamics. GOLDATA provides a comprehensive list of gold occurrences complete of geographic coordinates, discovery and production dates which can be displayed and analysed through geographic information systems (GIS) tools.