This paper focuses on the economic fortunes of the Chilean lithium industry over the past three decades and considers its likely future directions. When SQM commissioned its brine extraction facilities in the Salar de Atacama in 1995, joining the already established SCL (operating since 1984), Chile emerged as the world’s leading lithium producer. It retained this position until 2013 when Australian production surpassed it. Chile, Australia and Argentina now dominate the early stages of the lithium industry. Four multinational companies—Albemarle, SQM, FMC Corporation and Tianqi Lithium—accounted for more than 83% of world lithium output in 2016. These firms appear to exert considerable market power. Against this background, we outline and assess recent developments in the Chilean lithium sector, noting that the second Bachelet government (in office from 2014 to early 2018) convened a year-long National Lithium Commission in 2014. The members of this group suggested strategies to maintain and enhance Chile’s competitive advantage in the lithium sector. The final section considers the implementation of these in the light of the election of the second Piñera administration which took office in March 2018.

A widespread and pessimistic view of the availability of mineral commodities calls for strong government initiatives to ensure adequate future supplies. This article provides a more market oriented and optimistic perspective, one that focuses on production costs and prices rather than physical availability. It sees short-run shortages continuing to plague commodity markets in the future as in the past. Though painful while they last, these shortages are temporary and do not pose a serious long-run threat to human welfare. Moreover, even without government intervention, they self-correct. The sharply higher prices that they evoke create strong incentives that foster supply and curb demand. Potentially more serious are long-run shortages due to mineral depletion. Such shortages are often thought to be inevitable, a conclusion that flows directly from the physical view of depletion. For various reasons, we reject this view of depletion in favor of an economic view. The latter recognizes that depletion may create long-run shortages, but stresses that this need not be the case if new technology can continue to offset the cost-increasing effects of depletion in the future as it has in the past. The economic view also suggests that a list of mineral commodities most threatened by depletion can best be compiled using cumulative availability curves rather than the more common practice of calculating commodity life expectancies based on estimates of available stocks.

Throughout the history of its European settlement, Western Australia (WA) has derived great benefit during its mining boom periods. This was the case with the gold rushes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It also occurred in the four decades after 1960 when the state became a major exporter of iron ore, alumina nickel, mineral sands, diamonds and natural gas to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other Asian economies as well as its more established production and export of gold into world markets. The present paper assesses developments in the period between 2004 and 2014 and beyond, as the Chinese economy emerged to become WA's major mineral customer. In relation to other Australian states, it particularly reports on Western Australia's economic growth rates, per capita GDP, housing price movements, unemployment and workforce participation rates. There is some consideration as well of the public debt challenges recently facing the state. These have been magnified by low levels of return of Goods and Services Tax revenue to Western Australia by the Commonwealth Grants Commission. This is a reflection of the de facto redistribution of WA mining royalties to the other Australian states.

The purpose of the paper was to assess the main historical drivers of potash demand, to generate estimates of demand elasticities and to produce forecasts of potash consumption during the coming decade. The paper has used a comprehensive econometric model to estimate shortrun and long run price, income and cross elasticities. The world potash demand is found to be price inelastic in the short-run and even in the long run. Also, income, cross price elasticity and cross yield elasticity were found to be inelastic in the short and long run. Our modeling predicts that potash consumption for fertilizers will increase from 28.2 million tonnes in 2012 to around 37.8 million tonnes in 2022, which implies that the annual relative growth rate of potash consumption is expected to increase by 2.9%. As long as demand increases our prediction is that real potash prices will also increase, ceteris paribus. Delays in commissioning new production capacity are likely the main reason for price increases. Yet additional planned capacities that could potentially take place in the next decade still have the potential to limit the upside for potash prices.

Asian-Pacific Economic LiteratureVolume 30, Issue 2 p. 119-120 Book Review The Price of Oil , Roberto F Aguilera and Marian Radetzki Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2016 P. 242. ISBN: 9781107110014 Philip Maxwell, Philip Maxwell Curtin UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Philip Maxwell, Philip Maxwell Curtin UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 24 November 2016 https://doi.org/10.1111/apel.12165Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume30, Issue2November 2016Pages 119-120 RelatedInformation

In analysing the relatively recent economic decline of the iconic remote Australian mining town, Broken Hill, this paper seeks to derive lessons for the equally iconic gold and nickel mining city of Kalgoorlie Boulder. It also makes indicative predictions about the economic status of Kalgoorlie in 2050. Mining around Broken Hill, which has contracted dramatically since 1980, has been associated with a major decrease of population and housing, an aging population and income levels significantly below the national average. Attempts to diversify the local economy into tourism have had only limited success in replacing the impacts of mining. With the closure of the Super Pit after 2020, Kalgoorlie faces a similar period of decline during the coming decades.

Appreciating the pricing arrangements for a mineral and its compounds provides useful insight into the nature of its market and the industrial structure of its production. This paper focuses on the case of lithium, which has emerged from being a minor metal with limited profitable applications in 1950 to its glamour metal status some 65 years later. During this period bilateral contracts based on producer prices have been the major way in which prices have been negotiated. The entry of a major new producer (SQM) in the late 1990s led to a situation where price information was difficult to obtain, even though competition in the sector was growing. This is consistent with a movement from cooperative oligopoly to non-cooperative oligopoly. Growing price transparency since 2010 has been associated with the actual and projected entry of several new producers. With its continuing growth it seems inevitable that lithium will be formally traded on one of major metal exchanges within the next decade. In addition to this, the practice of transfer pricing between branches of established multinational producers also applies to the lithium industry.

Over the past century, lithium consumption has grown consistently and strongly as manufacturing firms utilise it in a growing number of important applications. Throughout this period, lithium supply has been obtained from brines and hard rock deposits from a limited number of producers operating initially most prominently in the USA, Canada, and Russia and more recently in Chile, Argentina, Australia, and China. Using a standard microeconomic framework the discussion assesses major factors influencing recent lithium demand and supply. Focusing on issues affecting the height of entry barriers, it then considers some potential developments in lithium supply by new players, some of whom are supported by major users of lithium in batteries and other applications.

Commentators have usually viewed potash as a rather unglamorous commodity because of its limited applications, low prices, the relatively small size of the industry, a persistent supply overhang situation and high barriers to entry. Yet on closer inspection, potash provides an interesting mineral market case study.Recently the industry has been operated as a cartel coordinated by two exporting companies Canpotex in North America (owned by PotashCorp, Agrium and Mosaic) and the Belarusian Potash Company in the Former Soviet Union (owned by Uralkali and Belaruskali). The sector attracted new interest after 2007 when world potash prices more than doubled and the prospect of more rapidly growing demand emerged as oil and gas prices surged. Two notable recent developments have been the unsuccessful effort by BHP Billiton to acquire PotashCorp in 2010, and the attempt by Uralkali in late 2013 to increase its market share by withdrawing from its marketing agreement with Belruskali, which now seems to have been thwarted.Considering the demand and supply sides of the industry, the current paper reflects on its recent evolution and assesses likely developments in the coming decades. (c) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In its role as a competitive producer of phosphate and potash Jordan has not suffered noticeably from the Resource Curse over the past 50 years. However, the effects on its economy because of its geographical proximity to major oil-producing states have been both positive and negative. It is arguable that an oil resource curse has applied to Jordan.Significant capital inflows from the oil economies during the 1970s enabled development of key sectors of the Jordanian economy, including mining and some manufacturing and enhanced the nation's infrastructure. However, declining real oil prices and falling worker remittances during the 1980s led to painful readjustments and adversely impacted on Jordan's economic development. There has been little or no evidence of Dutch disease in Jordan since 1960, though wars in energy rich nations such as Kuwait, Iraq and even Iran, have had an adverse impact on the economy. Mineral exploitation also has not adversely affected education spending.The direct and indirect effects of minerals and energy extraction at home and in nearby nations presently place Jordan at about the 50th percentile in the list of world nations in terms of their human development profile. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Although dominated by the forces of competition over the past 50 years, with relatively easy entry and exit of new producers and plentiful reserves, the phosphate industry and phosphate markets have experienced several interesting episodes during this period. These have been associated with the attempted establishment of a producer cartel during the mid-1970s, the significant but declining presence of state-owned production, the demise of the Soviet Union and the recent minerals boom. While noting the significance of the earlier events, the particular focus of this paper is on the events of the past two decades and likely development in the foreseeable future. The authors utilise the standard supply and demand framework developing their discussion.