Economic relationships and market trends of the rare earths
Abstract This paper considers the market trends of the rare earths and how they are strongly influenced by the by-product/co-product nature of their mining and processing. The two main economic minerals for the rare earths are bastnasite and monazite. Monazite is primarily a by-product of mining ilmenite and rutile and is affected by changes in these markets as well as the presence of thorium. Bastnasite is a byproduct of mining iron ore in China and a stand-alone product in the USA. The paper will use conceptional relationships and empirical data to delineate the various by-products/co-products relationships and how they determine observed market behavior.
Spillovers between cobalt, copper and nickel prices: implications for deep seabed mining
Interaction between prices of nickel, copper and cobalt, the latter a by-product of nickel and copper in laterites and sulphite deposits, are analysed in relation to the price of oil, the US real interest rate and the real effective exchange rate of dollar using an autoregressive distributed lag model, to draw considerations on the profitability in the exploitation of polymetallic manganese nodules and cobalt crust in a mutually exclusive scenario. The results show co-movements between these variables through the presence of three long-run relationships. Focusing mainly on the cobalt/nickel relationship, it is shown that price of cobalt anticipates and exerts a negative effect on nickel while, as expected, the price of oil has a positive impact and the exchange rate a negative one. Conversely, the impact of the real interest rate is not significant. A Monte Carlo simulation is employed to forecast a robust average price of nickel in the long run, finding that under the actual stagnant economic conditions and an average price of cobalt of $40/kg (at 2000 price equivalence), the price of nickel will remain close to the actual, around $18/kg (at 2000 price equivalence). This result, coupled with the literature findings that in a mutually exclusive scenario, the prevalence of cobalt crust over manganese nodules can be shown only if the price of nickel is below $9/kg (at 2000 price equivalence), justifies why increased attention has been re-directed towards polymetallic nodules.
A LITERATURE REIEW OF TARGET COSTING IN SSCI AND SCI&SCI-EXPANDED INDEXES
Target costing as a cost management and profit planning system is used by many competitive firms since 1970s. Although the concept is simple, the implementation needs an extensive collaboration inside and outside of the organization. In contrast, many organization managers think that target costing is just related with accounting and finance staff. Our study aims to review the literature of this important concept; target costing by examining 41 English articles published in SSCI and SCI&SCI-Expanded between 1985-2008. The study aims to briefly explain the content of each article to show the reader what has accomplished so far.