查看更多>>摘要：In economic theories, institutional change usually occurs in response to changes in relative prices. Mineral policies in mining countries frequently follow this behavior, modifying their tax systems as metal prices change. Nonetheless, Chile presents a deviation from common behavior with a mining tax reform that took place before a major increase in mineral commodity prices and when market analysts and political leaders expected prices to remain relatively constant. Using the Multiple Streams Framework, we fnd that the policy community combined with anticipated elections explains the initial failure of mining tax reforms in 2004 and then successful reform in 2005. We do not fnd that the national mood (part of the problem stream) played a key role in the reforms; it remained unchanged during this period, and even now, and thus cannot account for change. Furthermore, we develop and fnd support for two hypotheses on institutional maturity and issue complexity: when states have mature democratic institutions and the policy is complex, we expect policy entrepreneurs and the policy stream to have a greater impact than in states with weak institutions and less complex issues. We thus contribute by solving an empirical puzzle on mining policy and by proposing new hypotheses to investigate with the Multiple Streams Framework.
查看更多>>摘要：This paper re-examines the performances of stock prices, oil prices and exchange rates in twelve oil exporting countries amidst the ravaging consequences of the ongoing worldwide coronavirus pandemic. Consequently, the study adopted a panel Vector Autoregressive (pVAR) model which applied data from the pre- and post-COVID-19 periods. Contrary to the pre-COVID-19 pandemic period, the pVAR Granger causality test indicates that the stock market can as well affect the exchange rate market, though positively. Furthermore, the Impulse response functions (IRFs) shows that a shock to crude oil prices provokes a negative response by exchange rates in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era only. The Forecast Error Variance Decomposition (FEVD) estimates that such innovations to crude oil prices account for the varying fuctuations in exchange rates and stock returns at different periods, but is neither infuenced by the stock market activities nor the exchange rate market in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era. This suggests that before COVID-19, the different markets in the selected oil producing economies were only affected by their market fundamentals and dynamics only, but this changed with the plummeting oil prices in the COVID-19 pandemic era. The development of vaccines and the immediate vaccination of the world people will ease the lockdowns and increase the demand for crude oil by the high oil importing countries. With the improved earnings from this, and the associated appreciation of the local currencies against the US dollars, the capital market activities of these net oil exporting countries improve. Policy makers and investors should consider the dynamics in the oil market while making decisions.
查看更多>>摘要：The study investigates static and dynamic returns spillover effects between metal (gold, silver, copper and aluminum), energy (oil, natural gas and coal) and carbon markets in different frequency domains using the Diebold Yilmaz (2012) and the Baruník and Krehlík (2018) method. The results show that total connectedness in the post-COVID world is signifcantly higher compared to pre-COVID-19 outbreak period. The total spillover is contributed mainly by short-term spillover effects. Moreover, metal markets especially copper and silver have higher explanatory power. Spillover within markets is stronger than across these markets. In addition, the carbon market is more heavily interactive with other markets, and the metal market especially copper has relatively high explanatory power for the carbon price fuctuations in post-COVID-19outbreak periods. According to the net spillover, copper and gold has a hedge function in the short- and long-term, respectively. Furthermore, the relationship among these markets is time-varying, affected by market uncertainty such as the outbreak or major events.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 Elsevier LtdMongolia is rich in mineral resources. Its economy is based on mining. As of 2020, mineral licenses for 1.65 million hectares have been issued in Mongolia, which represent 1% of the country's territory. Mining involves a great negative impact on the environment and society in mining areas not only during mining operations but also after mines are closed. To avoid such impacts on the environment and local communities, it is imperative to secure funds for appropriate mine closure. Therefore, adequate policy and regulatory frameworks for mine closure, including financial assurance for mine closure, are key to ensuring proper mine closure and minimizing negative environmental, health and safety impacts that may result from inadequate mine closure or abandoned mines. Our comparative study on financial assurance for mine closure, based on the internationally-applied guidelines, show that Mongolia's current legal framework regulating mining activities includes only a minimum level of requirements for mine closure and thus represents a policy and regulatory weakness that may lead to inadequate mine closure, or abandoning mines without proper closure. The study applies one of the typical formulas to calculate the cost of a recent mine closure in Mongolia. We then expand such calculations to cover the entire nation for mines in explorations or in operations that will be closed in the near future. Based on this estimation, we find that the total funds required to rehabilitate the existing areas affected by mining represent from 0.07 to 51.1% of local government budgets. If financial assurance for mine closure is not secured in order to avoid the abandonment of mines, financial burdens for mine closure in the future will place a heavy burden on central and local government budgets and the country's economy, along with serious negative impacts on the environment, biodiversity and human health.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 Elsevier LtdAromatics is an important chemical material with a greatly increasing demand across the world. However, its production normally depends on the conventional oil-based naphtha to aromatics (OBNTA) route, resulting in difficulty for oil-shortage countries to meet local demand. The coal-based methanol to aromatics (CBMTA) route is considered a promising alternative to diversify the production of the aromatic whereas its industrial competitiveness relative to the OBNTA route has been not fully assessed at a resource-environment-economy level. This study proposes a comprehensive assessment framework that integrates the life cycle assessment, technical-economic analysis, and entropy weight method to quantify and compare the resource consumption, environmental emission, and economic benefit of the CBMTA and OBNTA routes. The operating data for the industrialized plants, economic data of China's market, and background data from the LCA database are taken as the input of the assessment framework. The sensitivity to operating and economic data and uncertainty caused by original data, allocation procedures, and feedstock sources are considered. The assessment shows that the CBMTA route scores worse comprehensive competitiveness than the OBNTA route due to its higher resource consumption and environmental emission. However, it performs well in economic benefit at Chinese current prices, which may attract more attention from investors. Based on the assessment, a SWOT analysis is carried out to further address resource-environment-economy tradeoffs. The analysis shows a considerable prospect of the CBMTA route thanks to all kinds of external opportunities, which however need to vigorously promote cleaner production policies and specific investment strategies tailored to local resource-environment-economy conditions. The current work can help policymakers, stakeholders, and investors better understand the multi-dimensional tradeoffs and make decisions.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022Newly elected administrations consider the Presidential honeymoon period as the best time to promote legislation about their policies and make their own mark on the future economy and society. We use historical data about the US presidential elections since the presidency term of Ronald Reagan (1980) to that of Joe Biden and examine how the commodity market reacts during this period. The emerging picture indicates that despite the corresponding increase in political uncertainty during this period, commodity prices are generally unaffected, but their variability is slightly lower. In addition, the forward-looking volatility indices related to commodities also show significant drops in their levels. These findings contradict theoretical models suggesting that market participants demand compensation for bearing heightened political risk. Finally, we find evidence that commodities are more volatile under Republican presidents than Democratic presidents.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 Elsevier LtdGenerally, shallow deposits are mined through open-pit mining and where the deposits are extended to a substantial depth, there is a potential for a combination of open-pit and underground mining methods. In this case, mine planning and optimisation play a significant role in the decision-making. This paper proposes a mixed-integer programming model to obtain the optimal transition point and the transition period from open-pit to underground mining, maximizing the project net present value considering crown pillar placement and development cost. An implementing at a three-dimensional case study generates the optimal transition point and period and an optimal production schedule for both open-pit and underground operations. The implementation considers three scenarios: transition point only (scenario 1), transition point and period without production delay (scenario 2), and transition point and period with two-period production delay during the transition (scenario 3). The optimal transition point for scenario 1 is 315 m and for scenarios 2 and 3 is 360 m below the surface.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 Elsevier LtdIn this paper, we examine the relationship between global stock markets, as respectively represented by the FTSE All-World Series and the MSCI Emerging Markets indexes, and the S&P GSCI Precious Metals index from 01 September 1999 to 03 May 2021. We employ the conditional correlation multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (MGARCH) to investigate this stock-precious metals nexus in terms of return and volatility spillovers. The study assesses impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on the stock-precious metals nexus and further examine this relationship by supplementing the Twitter's Daily Happiness Sentiment index to the methodological framework for the period from 01 January 2020 to 03 May 2021. We find that precious metals positively influence stock markets before the Covid-19 outbreak and firmly play a valuable role due to their hedge and safe haven characteristics. In contrast, the bivariate GARCH framework does not provide statistically significant evidence on the stock-precious metals nexus during the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, the tri-variate GARCH approach with stock markets, precious metals, and happiness sentiment indexes reveals sufficiently complicated interactions between these return series. Prominently, past change in the happiness index negatively affects the stock returns but positively drives the performance of precious metals. These findings indirectly demonstrate the stock-precious metals nexus under impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and reflect the demand of precious metals during crisis periods. Accordingly, we suggest a reasonable method of adjusting the proxies when no interaction effect is significantly found during unprecedented outbreaks.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2022 Elsevier LtdGraphene is considered the most promising and revolutionary frontier material in the 21st century, thus both developed and emerging countries have accelerated the advanced deployment of graphene innovation strategies. However, the evaluation of technological potential and vacant technology in the graphene field is still missing in existing studies, leading to the problems of less decision-making information for the government and innovation subjects. To fill this gap, this study constructs a comprehensive framework for technological opportunity analysis based on the patent data mining method. According to this framework, the key graphene technologies are firstly identified, then the potential of these key graphene technologies is predicted, and vacant graphene technologies are also revealed to enlighten future directions of graphene technology. Results indicate that the identified 10 key graphene technologies include nano-film technology, composite material technology for vehicles, graphene composite material preparation technology, graphene reinforcing agents, lithium battery electrode technology, nanotechnology, cycle equipment processing, battery and fuel cell electrode technology, coating technology, and graphene conductive ink technology. Graphene nanotechnology and graphene composite material preparation technology are currently in the growth stage and maturation stage, respectively; and the remaining 8 key graphene technologies enter into the saturation stage. Furthermore, 25 vacant technology areas in the graphene field have been detected, and breakthrough measures such as changing material structure and improving experimental equipment could help achieve the innovation of vacant graphene technologies. The policy implications for the innovation of graphene technology are also provided in the end.
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