The Economic Impacts of Pacific Ocean Deep-sea Manganese Nodule Development Project

The securing of raw material is an important requirement for economic development. Many countries, including Korea, actively seek out a stable supply of minerals such as manganese. Manganese nodules are rock concretions on the sea bottom formed of concentric layers of iron and manganese hydroxides around a core and include several strategic minerals necessary for economic development. In particular, the manganese nodule development project (MNDP) plays an important role in the Korean national economy. This study attempts to apply input-output (I-O) analysis in investigating the economic impacts of the MNDP in the Korean national economy. A static I-O framework was employed, focusing on four topics in its application; the production-inducing impacts, the value-added-inducing impacts, the employment-inducing impacts and R&D-inducing impacts of MNDP investments on other sectors. To this end, several versions of the demand-driven models are utilized. In addition, inter-industry linkage analysis is performed to obtain information on the forward and backward linkage effects of industries, including MNDP, to quantify the strength of causation among these industries.