Search

An increased understanding of the existing markets for recycled (secondary) metals, including interactions with virgin material production, is essential for public decision-making processes concerning the implementation and evaluation of different categories of recycling policies. In this paper, we review the existing literature with the purpose of discussing (1) the impacts of various recycling policies on metal markets in which aggregate demand can be met by both primary and secondary production, and (2) a number of challenges that policy-makers need to confront in choosing between various types of recycling policies and policy designs. A simple partial equilibrium model is used as a pedagogical tool for shedding light on the impacts of tradable recycling credits, virgin material taxes, and recycling subsidies. In a second step, the paper identifies and discusses a few key challenges that policy-makers will need to address in recycling policy-making. These challenges include improving the functioning of secondary material markets by addressing various non-environmental market inefficiencies; identifying and designing (second-best) policy mixes due to the presence of incomplete monitoring and enforcement of waste disposal behavior, and regulating environmental impacts through price- or quantity-based policies. Throughout the analysis, we consult the empirical literature on the functioning of scrap metal markets (e.g., steel, copper, and aluminum). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study elucidates the emerging concept of "friend-shoring," a strategy anchored in fortifying supply chains through political and strategic alignment. Central to our investigation is the Minerals Security Partnership (MSP), representing the first strategic application of the friend-shoring principle. The MSP unites nations committed to forging sustainable and ethical supply chains for critical minerals. While the primary objective of friend-shoring is to alleviate vulnerabilities in Western critical mineral supply chains, its broader implications encompass economic, geopolitical, environmental, and nationalistic objectives. The paper critically evaluates the advantages and potential pitfalls of friend-shoring, emphasizing the need to balance economic feasibility with adherence to robust environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards. In the backdrop of China's significant role, yet nuanced position in the critical mineral supply chain, the study offers insights into how the MSP can enhance the supply chain's effectiveness. The paper culminates by spotlighting areas for future research, advocating a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach to address the multifaceted challenges tied to the security of critical mineral supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reliable financial source for artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) has been a topic of concern for researchers, politicians, policy makers, civil society organisations, international donors and other development stakeholders in mineral-rich countries. This paper uses a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed journal articles published from 2010 to 2022 to identify and evaluate ASM financial sources in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The main financial sources identified are cooperative funds, government support, international development organisations, commercial banks, mineral buyers and individual financiers. Although informal financial sources (like private sponsors and mineral buyers) are reported to be exploitative and insufficient, the miners depend on them as they face bureaucratic and complicated procedures to access credit from formal sources like banks and government microcredits. Simplified formalisation procedures enable miners to easily comply with formal financial source conditionality. Government policies in mineral-rich countries should be aligned to create a conducive environment for multiple financial source availability so as to ensure economical decisions for profitable mining and better livelihood outcomes for people in ASM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study paper is to examine Jordan's mineral development and investment policies. Mining policies that attract foreign investment must handle both traditional investor concerns and some new challenges. The paper delves deeply into issues such as a country's geological, political, financial, regulatory, operational, fiscal, social, and environmental characteristics, as well as profit and marketing factors. After analyzing these criteria for Jordan, they were compared to the MENA region in order to provide insights into potential changes and improvements to both the MENA and Jordan mineral policies. International investors have not been drawn to Jordan's mineral resource sector for a number of reasons, including—but not limited to—a lack of digitally available and accessible geological data, lack of access to finance exploration projects, an unfavorable legal and fiscal environment, lack of many of the best practices for transparency standards, and lack of awareness and promotion of Jordan's mineral potential among international businesses. For Jordan to improve its standing in the world for investing in mining, it needs effective mining regulations, effective regulatory agencies, very lenient foreign investment laws, highly competitive tax system, enormous geologic potential, highly qualified personnel, exceptional local expertise and skills, modern infrastructure, and stable political and economic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mining is an important enterprise that will supply essential minerals for the country's infrastructural development. Mining is a key industry and a development engine in the Indian economy. The epidemic has had both immediate and long-term effects on the labour and industries in India. Short-term effects include the cessation of mineral production, salary loss due to absenteeism and pandemic limitations, unemployment, and the selling of minerals on the market. The reputation and economic health of industries, fresh mineral deposit exploration, and new mining complex development have all been impacted in long-term. Aside from the mining industry-specific impact of COVID-19, the social fabric of the mining workers has been impacted since they are living in an environment of fear and uncertainty. This paper attempts to analyse the effect of COVID-19 on extractive industries in India. It also focuses the steps which taken by the Indian government. The paper concluded with the negative effect of COVID-19 which disrupts the mining sector and the contribution declined during COVID-19. However, for instance from mineral rich-Odisha, the mining sector takes up by its growth in post COVID-19 period with remarkable increment from negative growth to high positive rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical minerals are those minerals that are essential for modern technologies, economic development and national security. Resilent acess to critical minerals is required for low carbon technologies in line with India's COP26(COP26 stands for the 26th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The UNFCCC is a treaty that came into effect in 1994. The COP is the supreme decision-making body of the UNFCCC, and all states that are parties to the convention are represented at the COP.) commitemnts. Critical minerals are distinguished by distinctive chemical and physical properties. Apart from geological processes that determine the physical availability of these minerals there are a host of other factors that influence access to the resources on the ground such as quantity of mineral present, its grade, and the assessment of the optimum methods for mining and processing of ore. Therefore, reliable estimates of the total amount of these minerals that may be available in the Earth's crust are difficult to ascertain at preliminary level of exploration. This implies building capacity at each value chain stage (mineral exploration, mineral extractions, intermediate processing, manufacturing, and recycling). India is dependent on import for many critical minerals including lithium, cobalt, and nickel. Thrust has been given in National Mineral Policy 2019 towards exploration of energy critical minerals, for which the country is mainly dependent on imports. To boost the critical minerals supply chain in India, a number initiative that the government has taken will be discussed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As consumption of the Earth's finite resources continues to increase, significant stress is placed on the global economy, including the depletion of critical minerals and environmental pollution. One of the proposals to address this future scarcity is to exploit resources from near-Earth objects (NEOs), such as asteroids. The right NEOs could provide enormous quantities of resources, including platinum group metals (PMGs), for companies involved in this industry. However, the current technologies and equipment used to extract metals from the Earth are not suitable due to the difference in gravity on asteroids and new technologies must be developed to enable successful mineral extraction on NEOs. Several companies and startups have been creating prospecting technologies during the past years to make asteroid mining a reality. This paper provides a bibliographic overview of the major players operating in the global asteroid and Earth mining market. It compares terrestrial mining technologies and asteroid mining R&D projects, and discusses the Earth mining industry's conservative vision for investing in R&D. Space mining is an embryonic industry. There is significant potential to extract critical minerals from NEOs, however the economic feasibility remains uncertain due to the low level of maturity in the required technologies. Despite significant advances in the past 20 years, it is clear that space mining remains a very high risk business activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prices for battery-grade lithium have increased substantially since 2020, which is propelling the search for additional sources of this important element. Battery-grade lithium is predominately recovered from continental brines. Most crude oil and natural gas wells recover briny formation water, which may represent an additional source. Chemical analysis of these waters has been shown to indicate the presence of varying concentrations of lithium and related elements. This paper briefly reviews developments and literature supporting the presence of lithium in petroleum reservoir brines. It also describes the coverage and distribution of lithium data analyses in the United States Geological Survey National Produced Waters Geochemical Database (PWGD). It then addresses the question as to whether a lithium concentration can be accurately predicted using constituents of ion chemistry in produced brines from specific geologic formations. Four machine learning algorithms are employed to classify the commercial potential of lithium in oil field brines using data from oil wells recovering formation water from the Smackover Formation. The calibrated classification models are further applied to new (out-of-sample) data from the Marcellus Formation in the Appalachian Basin. Among the approaches considered, the predictive performance and wider applicability of the gradient boosted tree and the deep neural network models are determined to be the most promising. Finally, we discuss how the calibrated models could be applied to assure the quality of the data reported from chemical laboratory analysis and for imputation when lithium values are missing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses potential new metrics for criticality assessments testing them on lithium supply chain. In the midst of the US-China technological competition, it is essential to fine-tune the methodology according to the new international context. First, to understand more in depth the structure and complexity of critical minerals supply chain, as countries are not fully aware of the intricate webs of cross-ownership or firm-to-firm relations that determine ultimate control from mining to downstream activities. To this end, I propose and discuss the concept of source of control (SOC). Second, I take as a case study the geography of production of lithium, from a country and company perspective, to show the complexity of two-level interconnections among entities involved. Criticality is a social-constructed feature that can inform policymaking in raw materials' supply chains and it should consider not only where those critical minerals come from but also who controls their production. In order to test the plausibility of these improvements, I show how the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is intended to redraw the lithium-ion battery supply chain through a top-down approach. Generally, criticality studies have been primarily concerned about dependency risks while not considering the role of positive/negative externalities. Once these are clearly recognized, policy interventions should be tailored according to supply chain dynamics in industries or technological assets that States judge to be strategic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disruptions in the minerals supply chain play a central role in defining the future stock of minerals; therefore, an in-depth analysis of the outcomes and variables affecting exploration is required. In comparative terms, the exploration of critical minerals and major minerals presents geological and technical differences; thus, exploration budgets for critical minerals should be expected to depart from those observed in other minerals. In this context, the main goal of this paper is to contrast how exploration budgets differ between critical and major minerals when considering a set of key variables. We take a multivariate statistical analysis approach based on firm-level budget exploration data to show four key findings: exploration budgets allocated for critical minerals remain consistently lower than major minerals even when controlling for other factors. Moreover, they present a higher sensitivity to fluctuations in commodity prices. Besides, the investment made by larger companies in critical minerals significantly lags behind those made by junior companies. Additionally, the focus of exploration activity for critical minerals predominantly lies in the earlier stages of the exploration process. We expect these initial results to be used as a step forward to facilitate the discussion about exploration policies and, consequently, the reliability of the supply chain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Environment, Social and Governance' (ESG) considerations have received increasing attention as components that inform responsible investments in mining and global material supply. In ESG, governance variables have been mostly regarded as internal firm structures and broad national institutional strength, neglecting closer observations on economic regulation and national raw material politics. Improved governance data to support ESG evaluations should include historical and current relations between public governance bodies and private-sector firms. This paper examines the role of competition regulation agencies in weighing out and mediating relations between the State and multinational private-sector mining firms to unpack components that affect governance in mining. It does so by commenting on empirical data of the purchase held in 2018 of SQM shares—the world's second largest lithium raw materials supplier—by Tianqi Lithium—one of the largest lithium materials producers in China. The paper discusses the place of equity markets in politics of nation-making and economic regulation in mining. It argues that beyond internal corporate structures, the governance criteria in the ESG profile of mining companies are largely affected by domestic economic regulation maturity, domestic political geography histories of private equity and imageries of corporate shares and natural resources. Furthermore, this paper argues that the effective governance of lithium supply in Chile is affected by political tensions between economic regulation and contractual regimes in mining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes its starting point in the fact that many mines have managed to improve its work environment, with regards to, for example, accident occurrence, while at the same time having stopped seeing improvements in these areas even in the wake of technology interventions. Technology projects in the mining industry continue to make claims on further improvements to the work environment, and make wider claims still, but have not addressed underlying causes that lead to underperformance of technology in terms of work environment improvements. This paper suggests that when we look closer at the situation, we find a complex situation in which negative and positive effects on the work environment follow the implementation of new technology. The analysis conducted in the paper further suggests that this has to do with mining environments having reached a level where historically major risks have been addressed; remaining risks, which are still significant, are of such a nature that their singular treatment — attempting to address these risks through isolated action such as new technology — engenders risks elsewhere. At the same time, the mining industry is of such a character that technological sophistications will fail to ultimately address the fundamental underlying causes of technology's underperformance; technology by itself will never be enough. In part, this is due to constraints stemming from the characteristics of the mining industry, resulting in lower and slower technological progress for instance. The paper, thus, proposes a shift in focus with regards to technology, from technology itself to the processes surrounding the development, implementation, and use of technology in the mining industry. The paper, then, outlines some requirements for such a process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A report by UNCTAD on illicit financial flows claims that misinvoicing of extractive commodity exports accounts for very large illicit financial flows from African countries. The report has received considerable attention, and it is possible that governments may take actions based on the assumption that the claims in the report are true. The present paper analyses these claims, focusing on South African gold exports, which account for the vast majority of the alleged illicit financial flows. Data in the source used for the UNCTAD report (UN Comtrade) are analysed in greater detail than is presented in the UNCTAD report. It is shown that the claims in the UNCTAD report are not supported by the data. It is impossible to prove any misinvoicing and anomalies in the statistics cannot be shown to be due to illicit financial flows. The authors of the report were clearly aware that misinvoicing could not be proved and that there were alternatives, more likely explanations of the statistical anomalies identified. They chose, however, to still present their claims of misinvoicing. UNCTAD produced a report with similar claims in 2016, and those claims were disproved at the time. There is very little evidence of misinvoicing in extractive commodities trade, and mirror trade analysis is in any case of very limited value when it comes to detecting or proving it. The UNCTAD report also uses mirror trade analysis in a highly questionable way that differs from the way it is applied by respected researchers. Different methods are necessary to identify or assess the magnitude of any illicit financial flows associated with the extractive industry. More granular data, supported by an understanding of international trade statistics, the international trading system and trading practices for the commodities concerned are needed in order to arrive at estimates with some degree of accuracy. UNCTAD was given an opportunity to comment on the article and did so. UNCTAD did not dispute the substance of the present article. Unfortunately, UNCTAD has refused to allow Mineral Economics to publish the comments. Nothing in the comments justified any changes in the text of the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The attractiveness of mineral investments across countries and regions worldwide can be judged through various measures, each with its strengths and weaknesses. The purpose of this paper is to scrutinize the Fraser Institute's ranking of mining jurisdictions, which builds on eliciting the perceptions of industry representatives around the world through an annual survey. The analysis takes stock in the growing scholarship on country performance indicators and concludes that due to the low response rate and the lack of clear definitions of some of the underlying concepts (e.g., political stability), there are reasons to question both the reliability and the validity of this survey. There could also exist incentives among exploration companies to "game" the rankings. For these reasons, the ranking outcomes do not constitute a meaningful scorecard that countries can employ to improve their mining-related policies. However, despite these deficiencies, the Fraser Institute's survey often enjoys relatively uncritical media attention. It even sets in motion a political "rankings game" in which the mining companies, governments, and other organized groups choose to participate. There is an urgent need for a more reliable and unbiased survey approach, including the consideration of alternative—complementing—measures for assessing investment attractiveness in the mining industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore the relationship between refined and scrap copper prices, considering the possibility that this relationship may vary across various products and over time. Building upon the conjecture put forth by Phillip Crowson (Miner Econ 24(1):1-6, 2011), here referred to as the Crowson Conjecture, our study aims to investigate how the substitution between refined copper and copper scrap No. 1 and No. 2 can impact the prices of each other. To achieve this, we develop a theoretical model that allows us to understand the potential influence of substitution between refined copper and copper scrap No. 1 and No. 2 during different time periods. Additionally, we conduct an empirical test using monthly time series data spanning from January 2004 to June 2022, analyzing structural breaks in these prices. Our empirical analysis successfully identifies three distinct structural breaks: January 2004 to August 2009, September 2009 to July 2017, and August 2017 to June 2022. These breaks serve as critical time periods for measuring Granger causality between the examined prices. Interestingly, our findings indicate that the causal relationships between the refined and scrap copper prices change throughout these three analyzed breaks, providing evidence in support of Crowson Conjecture. By shedding light on the evolving nature of the relationship between refined and scrap copper prices, our study contributes to a deeper understanding of the dynamics within the copper market. These insights have implications for market participants and policymakers, enabling them to make more informed decisions regarding pricing and resource allocation strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world's dependency on cobalt mines in Congo and cobalt refineries in China is seen as serious security issues with potentially dangerous implications for the energy transition. However, Chinese refineries have a similar supply security issue as most of its cobalt concentrates are imported. Most supply security studies take a country perspective on market concentration and supply risks. However, control of the mines and refineries lies with the producing companies, not the governments of the countries where they are located. This paper analyses the corporate structure of the cobalt industry at the mine and the refinery stages over a longer time period to establish changes in the level of corporate concentration and to put the situation in 2018 in perspective. The level of corporate concentration at the mine stage is low and does not raise concerns for market failures or a lack of competitiveness. Corporate concentration of refined cobalt depends on the Chinese government's influence over Chinese production: if the state control over individual refineries is assumed to be strong, the corporate concentration is high. Mine stage supply security could be strengthened by improving the general political stability in the DRC to make the country more attractive for investors other than the present ones. Increased local beneficiation would strongly benefit Congo and reduce China's influence. This is a long and complicated process and its success is not at all certain. At the refinery stage, the solution is much easier: reliability of supply could be improved by constructing refineries in countries outside China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community development (CD) is widely accepted within the mining industry as a major part of the industry's sustainability strategy. Consequently, over the last two decades, community development has gained root in the mining industry, providing a framework for mining company interactions with local communities around the world. Dedicated CD departments stocked with development specialists have since become a common fixture of mining company structures at all levels. This development has naturally triggered an avalanche of scholarly interest in the mining industry CD practices and outcomes. However, current literature on the subject has rarely explored mining companies' discourse on the "community" as is applied within the context of CD practice. Based on Wiering and Arts' three-level analysis of discourse, the paper interrogates the concept of the "community" as is understood and applied within the Ghanaian mining industry, at the ontological, normative, and strategic levels. The paper shows that mining companies hold three simultaneous ontological conceptualizations of the community: communities as victims; as enclaves of poverty; and as owners of social license, each differing slightly in its underlying logic to CD. Of all three conceptualizations, the owners of social license view, which is driven by an instrumentalist logic, dominates CD practice, allowing mining companies to approach CD largely as a risk management tool. At the normative level, companies have advocated "value creation" (for communities). At the strategic level, company–community partnerships have been proposed as the preferred method of accomplishing CD. These views of the community and their accompanying industry practices are dissected and policy proposals suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sound corporate governance (CG) system in the mining sector ought to promote resource utilization while adhering to the principles of accountability and responsibility. In this case, it is curious that so little attention has been paid to understand the CG structures and practices of the mining industry. Therefore, this paper aims to unearth the CG practices of Indian mining through a uniform and structured CG Index. The paper develops a CG index to measure the CG performance across a range of CG structures. The data for this study was extracted from 2012–2013 to 2020–2021 for 11 mining companies in India. The sample companies constitute 78.23% of the total market cap of NSE 500 metal and mining companies. T-test was conducted to test the differences between the CG characteristics of the sample companies on various levels. This study highlights the CG practices within the mining industry of India. The findings of this study can come handy to assess the CG performance of mining companies in not just emerging economies but for the developed ones too. This study lays the foundation for future studies around CG practices, given its role in sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metal mineral resources are important raw materials in industrial production, and metal as an important object in the futures market, its discovery function is an important sign to measure the level of market development. The price of metal futures market has the characteristics of high-frequency data, and the mechanism of price discovery in different frequencies needs to be realized by time series decomposition method. In this paper, the complementary ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise vector autoregressive model is constructed to re-examine the price discovery of nonferrous metal futures from the aspects of multilevel, multi-subject, and different volumes. Four typical nonferrous metals are selected for empirical research in China. The results show that price discovery exists in China's nonferrous metal futures market. Meanwhile, there are significant differences in the functional efficiency of typical metal prices under different time scales. The volume of contracts will greatly affect the efficiency of price discovery. Finally, we also find that futures prices affect spot prices, but spot prices do not affect futures prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effects of various types of announcements made by lithium producers on stock prices. We collected data from 40 lithium-producing companies listed on the world's largest stock exchanges, spanning from May 2020 to September 2022. To analyze the impact of announcements such as quoted and unquoted securities, market announcements, company reports, public meetings and presentations, financial announcements, and technical announcements on stock prices, we employed an extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) model. Our results indicate that stock exchange market announcements and announcements about public meetings and presentations significantly influenced the stock prices of all eight large-cap companies studied. Announcements about public meetings and presentations were crucial predictors of stock prices for 73% of all companies analyzed. Additionally, positive financial announcements were key predictors for 70% of the companies. These findings suggest that investors should consider these predictors when making investment decisions in the lithium-related stock market. This study contributes to the existing literature by providing empirical evidence on the impact of different types of announcements made by lithium producers on stock prices. Furthermore, the XGBoost model used in this study can be applied to other industries and markets to analyze the impact of various types of announcements on stock prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this research is to investigate the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on total factor productivity (TFP) in the European mining industry, considering micro- and macroeconomic indicators of the relationship between CSR and TFP. Employing data from 40 European mining companies from content analysis, CSR Hub, and the World Bank between 2018 and 2021, this paper utilizes a combination of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and panel regression techniques to test the research hypotheses. The findings suggest that the TFP of European mining firms is positively affected by CSR initiatives implemented by the companies. Also, the empirical results depict that the CSR-TFP relationship is mainly established on institutional criteria. The results also indicate that CSR-related factors, namely, transparency and reporting, training, health and safety, and resource management, are the impacting indicators. The study broadens the horizons of this line of research and can be beneficial to CEOs, managers, experts, policymakers, decision-makers, and economists in the field of mining who are willing to promote responsible and sustainable mining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing demand for primary mineral resources and the finite nature of mineral reserves necessitate their efficient utilization while minimizing losses. To extend mine life and increase economic reserves, transitioning from open-pit to underground mining has proven to be a viable strategy. Identifying this critical transition depth is pivotal, as it significantly impacts mining profitability. Therefore, in this paper we propose a method to determine the open-pit/underground transition depth based on an economic block model, accounting for the final pit limit and considering the inherent uncertainty in mineral prices. To achieve our research aim, a hypothetical grade model was constructed initially, and we used @Risk software to perform Monte Carlo simulation of copper prices based on historical data. By generating 200 different mineral price scenarios, we created 200 economic block models. Subsequently, nine mining sequences were designed, and seven distinct scenarios were established to ascertain the final open-pit limit and the depth of the transition point between mining methods, contingent on fluctuating mineral prices. Based on the outcomes derived from the seven scenarios, the depth at which the mining method transition from open-pit to underground is recommended to be 375 m from the surface, under the aforementioned uncertainties. This recommendation is based on the cumulative net present value of open-pit/underground mining, as illustrated in scenario number 7. Our findings provide valuable insights for mining companies seeking to optimize resource utilization and maximize profitability while navigating uncertain mineral price environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Swedish taxation regime for mining has been criticised for being overly advantageous for mining companies, and for not adequately safeguarding the interests of the state and/or other rights- and stakeholders. The critique has been expressed in the media and in political discourse, whereas more thorough assessments are lacking. This paper addresses this shortcoming, and it uses financial modelling and international comparisons. The Swedish taxation regime for mining is not substantially different from that of other sectors of the economy, and it has also been unchanged for a long time. It includes no royalty nor any fiscal instrument to capture windfall profits, and it is based on statues rather than bespoke contracts. In terms of incomes to the state from mining performed by private companies, the most substantial ones are the corporate income tax (CIT) and the dividend withholding tax. In terms of ensuring local benefits, there is no specific instrument in place for mining. The overall taxation system is such that municipalities charge substantial pay roll taxes, and the taxes derived in this way are of the same order of magnitude as taxes normally derived by the central state through the CIT. This principle of ensuring local benefits may however be under threat, as mining becomes increasingly mechanised—with fewer employees—and with an increasing prevalence of so-called fly in-fly out personnel. The findings confirm that the Swedish tax regime is comparatively generous towards mining companies. Furthermore, the lack of a royalty means that the state foregoes opportunities to earn incomes in times of poor mining profitability, and the lack of a windfall tax similarly gives an uneven distribution of benefits when commodity prices are high. This, in turn, suggests that there is a need for reform. Moreover, the current system includes a so-called mineral fee, which mainly functions to compensate landowners, but a smaller part also falls to the central state. The funds collected by the state in this way are insignificant, and as this component of the mineral fee is both poorly understood and contentious, it is recommended that it be discontinued. It is recommended that in general, economic tools that specifically model the outcomes of taxation regimes for mining be supplemented with general analyses of the whole taxation regime in question, to provide a better basis for analysis, and associated policy advice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do commodity prices drive exploration permit applications? In a recent qualitative study on mineral exploration and risk management in Sweden, a number of respondents representing mineral exploration organizations and governmental agencies expressed how mineral exploration permit applications increase with rising commodity prices. This paper seeks to investigate this alleged correlation quantitatively. In doing so, the study uses time series analysis and ARIMA models to analyze the covariation of applications for exploration permits filed with the Mining Inspectorate of Sweden and annual average copper, lead, zinc, silver, and gold prices in the period 2000 to 2018. Contrary to the anecdotal evidence given by actors in the exploration and mining industry, the paper cannot show any significant covariation between the majority of mineral prices and applications filed. Contrary to expectations, there appear therefore not to be any correlation between copper, lead, silver, and gold prices and the volume of permit applications filed annually. Moreover, the study also shows that the correlation between annual average zinc prices and permit applications appears to be the reverse of what was first believed as the annual change in application volume occurs before the rise or fall in zinc prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gold mining industry is a major contributor to the economy of Ghana. However, this contribution has been declining over the past decade. This decline coupled with the importance of the industry to the country's economy necessitated the need to analyse the performance of companies within the industry. Therefore, a cost performance analysis of Ghana's major gold mines was done in this paper for the period 2007 to 2016 using industry cost curves. A correlation coefficient analysis was also done to identify the key cost drivers in Ghana. This paper further analysed the cost competitiveness of Ghana's gold mining industry against other gold producing countries in the world. From the analysis, it was found that Newmont's Ahafo and Akyem mines were consistent low unit cost producers. Both mines benefited from economies of scale and high metallurgical recovery rates. On the other hand, AngloGold Ashanti's Obuasi and Golden Star's Bogoso mines were found to be consistent high unit cost producers due to low-productive and labour-intensive underground mining methods used and very low metallurgical recovery rates, respectively. Finally, the study revealed that Ghana's gold mining industry was not cost competitive when compared to other gold-producing countries over the analysis period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sintered neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnets and lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries are essential in a number of clean energy technologies such as electric vehicles and wind turbines. The United States (US) has some manufacturing capacity for Li-ion batteries and almost no capacity for producing sintered NdFeB magnets. As a result, the US imports significant quantities of these batteries and magnets. Trade statistics on imported batteries and magnets, however, include only those materials imported in the form of batteries and magnets (referred to here as reported imports) and exclude materials embedded in intermediate and final products such as hard disk drives, electric motors, electric vehicles, and wind turbines (referred to here as embedded imports). This paper develops original estimates of embedded imports of NdFeB magnets and Li-ion batteries, leading to a more complete picture of US imports than looking at reported imports alone. It estimates that more than 90% of NdFeB magnet imports were embedded in intermediate and final products in 2021. In contrast, more than 90% of Li-ion battery imports were in the form of the batteries themselves rather than embedded in intermediate and final products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the effects of mining intensity and presence on Peru's mining districts' welfare from 2004 to 2019. A pooled cross-section regression is used which is constructed from different sources and two sets of comparisons are made: the first compare districts with and without mining presence within mining provinces, and the second compares districts with and without mining presence without the constraint of being within mining provinces. The primary dependent variables included in the model are income inequality, labor income, and poverty rate. In mining districts, inequality has increased, but labor income has increased, and poverty has decreased compared to non-mining districts. However, once control for province-fixed effects and clustered by standard errors at the district level, the significance of inequality is lost, while the impacts on labor income and poverty remain. The transmission mechanisms are human capital, employment, and redistributive policies. Also the mining presence has had positive effects on labor income in other sectors such as construction and commerce; Finally, the labor incomes of unskilled workers increases but not the labor incomes of skilled workers, and it has negatively impacted informal employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the implications for coal supply security for the domestic South African market when faced with weaker export demand. It expands on a previously introduced model of domestic coal trade, DOTRAMOD, by accounting for mining profit, the opening of new mines and the closing of loss-making mines. The results indicate that declining demand for exported coal would result in declining profits for multi-product mines. This would lead to the closure of some mines and reduced coal supply to domestic power producers. These results highlight the importance of the mine investment problem in commodity market studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mineral economics is a genuine multidisciplinary field dealing with economic and policy matters related to the production, distribution, and consumption of mineral commodities. We discuss why the increasing complexity, ambiguity, ambivalence, and social contestation of subjects of mineral economics promote the participation of mineral economists in transdisciplinary processes. These processes relate (a) knowledge from targeted interdisciplinary processes and (b) mitigated discourses among different stakeholders to provide (c) a shared problem definition and to attain shared basic knowledge about problem transformation science and practice. We discuss known examples of misperceptions regarding minerals (phosphorus), such as an imminent scarcity threat, the incorrectly understood causations of the 2007/2008 price peak and present the phosphorus ore-grades increased by 3.2% between 1983 and 2013 fallacies (which is based on the Simpson's paradox), and only few countries have mineable reserves fallacy. Here, we also illuminate motivations underlying several mineral economics–related misunderstandings. We argue that societally relevant questions require an honest mineral economics knowledge brokership. The example of the Global TraPs project, which targeted sustainable phosphorus management, is presented. Honest brokership to attain a clearinghouse function of science requires trust formation in society. We argue that this calls for increasing the understandability of relationships that are not well-understood, such as "if prices rise, so do stocks." Wellmer and Becker-Platen's feedback control cycle may be considered an example of how complex mineral economics can become and how challenging it is to be understandable to scientists from different disciplines and faculties as well as to practitioners whose knowledge may well be used to cope with the complexity of given problems. Thus, the present paper represents a plea for mutual learning between science and practice in order to understand the complex social and economic challenges of mineral resource dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the evolution of innovation in the mining sector and how this innovation responds to the economic environment, in particular to changes in commodity prices. For this purpose, we combine commodity price data with innovation data as proxied by patent filings extracted from a novel unit record database containing comprehensive patent and firm-level data for the mining sector from 1970 to 2015. We include patents registered both by mining companies and mining equipment, technology, and service (METS) firms. With a multi-country panel analysis, we find that innovation in the mining sector is cyclical. Innovation increases in periods of high commodity prices while decreasing during commodity price recessions. Our results suggest that innovation increases mostly with long price cycle variations, while mostly unaffected by medium and short cycles. METS-related innovation seem the driving force of this mechanism. In contrast, countries specializing in mining industries are found to be slower in reacting to price changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Price uncertainty is one of the major uncertainties in the life of mine (LOM) planning process which can have a decisive effect on the overall profitability. Today's mine planning software tools provide block-sequencing optimisation for a given static price assumption that is then used as a basis of managerial decision-making process. This paper proposes a complementary approach to this by introducing a simulation-based decision-making tool that, with the help of simulation, seeks for the optimal mine plan when a managerially estimated price development with minimum and maximum boundaries is used as a data input for the given period. To demonstrate the approach, a realistic gold mine case study is presented with five alternative and technically feasible mine plans calculated in a static optimiser from a commercial mine planning software package. These mine planning scenarios are then subjected to price uncertainty in simulation with and without a price trend assumption to highlight the effect of price on the mine's expected performance. Based on the results, we derive and demonstrate a simulation-based system that automates the matching of optimal mine plan with the managerial insight of long-term price development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mining and the permitting process for mineral projects in Sweden has been criticised as inadequately safeguarding the rights of Indigenous reindeer herding Sámi, who hold usufruct rights to more than half the country's territory. There have been calls for Sweden to ratify the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (ILO 169) and to change its Mineral Law. This paper evaluates the extent of protection of Sámi rights — and not only those engaged in reindeer herding — in Sweden's minerals permitting process. It also considers the implications if changes were made to align this process with the Indigenous-rights framework. The paper demonstrates that reindeer herding Sámi are, broadly, treated similar to landowners in the mineral projects permitting process. However, there is discrimination when it comes to being able to have a share in the benefits of a project: impacted reindeer herders have no such option whereas landowners do. Also, the permitting processes do not consider social and cultural impacts, nor are there obligations for the state to be sufficiently involved in consultation processes. Addressing the identified shortcomings would require only small changes to the Mineral Law and/or to its application and would be possible with only limited impacts on mining because the sector is not a significant user of land whilst it creates large economic values. However, extending those changes (to give parity between landowners and Sámi rights holders) in other important economic sectors which use more extensive land areas, would entail a considerable transfer of resources and associated power. Furthermore, changing the Mineral Law specifically would mean little in terms of safeguarding the rights of the majority of Sami who do not engage in reindeer herding. This suggests that calls for changes to mineral-related legislation to resolve indigenous land right issues are mis-directed or at least insufficient, and that other type of legislative change is required, fundamentally including resolving how extensive and strong the Sámi's rights to land should be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]