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International Raw Materials Market
International Raw Materials Market
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St-Petersburg State Technical University
The Department of Economic & Management
The Chair of World Economics
Work on subject
«International Raw Materials Market»
The Student A.E Epechourin
Group 1078/2
The Tutor O.G. Lebedinskaj
St-Petersburg
1997
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Contents
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Pages
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Introduction
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1
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I.
Trade intermediates and natural
resources
I.I
Middle products (intermediates)
I.II
Natural resources
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3
3
5
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II. Raw Materials
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6
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Summary
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10
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Addendum
1
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12
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Bibliography
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13
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Introduction
1. Raw
Materials - A natural of semifinished god that is used in manufacturing or
processing to make some other good. Bauxite is the raw materials (ore) from
which aluminum is made; aluminum is turn can be the raw material from which
household utensils are manufactured.[1]
2.
There is another definitions from the subject area of raw materials distinct
from the above mentioned:
· Raw materials are products immediately extracted from nature which
have undergone a first processing through which they have become marketable
and, consequently, a tradable commodity. Raw materials include all energy raw
materials (crude oil, natural gas, coal, uranium), metals, semi-metals and
industrial minerals (kaolin, graphite, sulfur, salts, phosphates), rocks, water
as well as all plant and animal products, whether they come from tropical
regions (coffee, jute, tropical timber) or from temperate latitudes (wheat,
meat, wool, etc.).[2]
· Raw material economy: It comprises all activities which are part of
the planned handling of raw materials, i.e. explanation, evaluation,
extraction, conversion into a tradable product, trade and forecasting.
"Planned" here means economically useful, ecologically and socially
responsible activities.[2]
· Resources are all natural material systems which as such are no
commodities, but the intactness of which is a basic prerequisite for the
continued existence of the earth's chemical and physical equilibrium and,
consequently, for the survival of mankind. Resources include: the ozone
balance, the CO2 balance, the equilibrium of sea water, the tropical forest,
the krill and fish population, etc.[2]
· World resource balances are the planned (i.e. ecologically useful and
socially responsible) handling of resources. This comprises: the explanation,
evaluation, risk assessment and forecasting regarding world resources.[2]
Current research emphasis [2]
· international raw material balances
· supply problems of the industrial countries
· location disadvantages of the developing countries
· dumping problems in international raw material trade
· recycling as a source for raw materials
· raw material deposits and connected environmental problems in east
Siberia (addendum 1)
· structural questions and environmental problems of
the Polish energy and metal economy[2]
I. Trade intermediates and natural resources
Once international trade in more than final consumer
goods is allowed, basic notions of comparative advantage need to be
re-examined. We have already discussed the limitations in a multi-commodity
word of comparing autarky prices in two countries to predict item-by-item the
pattern of trade; generally only correlations can be made except under
additional assumptions. With trade in intermediates allowed, the problems in
predicting trade in final goods became even greater. As MakKenzie (1945)
remarked in one of his classic problem on the Ricardian model, the familiar
nineteenth century trade pattern in which Lancashire produced and exported
cotton textiles would most probably not have been observed if England had had
to grow its own cotton [1].
We shall have occasion both in this section and to revert to this theme: the
pattern of trade in final goods may not be readily deducible from the
comparison of pre-trade relative prices in these markets.[3]
I.I Middle products (intermediates)
The phrase «middle-products» was used by Sanyal and
Jones (1982) to encompass what traditionally are referred to as intermediate
goods, goods-in-process, and natural resources which have been extracted and
prepared for trade on world markets. The core concept in their model is that of
a productive spectrum whereby, at initial stages, natural resources and raw
materials are processed and, in the final stages, goods-in-process and
intermediate products are locally assembled for national consumption.
International trade, according to this view, takes place in commodities,
somewhere in the «middle» of this productive spectrum, freeing up a nation’s
input requirements in the final stages of production from its output tradeable
middle products at earlier stages.[3]
Such a view of the role of international trade
suggests a natural division between that part of the economy which produces
commodities (middle products) for the world market (including the local
economy), called the Input Tier, and that section of the economy which makes
use of internationally traded middle products as input along with local
resources to produce none-trade goods for final consumption (the Output Tier).
Ruled out by assumption in the simple version on this model is the notion that
the «middle» stages of the productive spectrum might be «thick» in the sense
that tradeable middle products might use other tradeable middle products as
inputs. In addition, in production structure in each tier of the economy as
assumed to resemble that of the specific-factors model. Labor is mobile both
among sectors in each tier and between tiers. The balance of payments provides
an additional link between the two tiers; if the trade account is balanced, the
value of total output from the Input Tier of the economy is matched by the
value of middle products used as inputs (along with labour) in the Output
Tier.[3]
Several types of questions have been raised in the
context on this model, and of central concern in each case is the allocation of
labour between tiers and the real wage. Fore example, a transfer payment which
gives rise to a trade surplus requires labour to be reallocated to the Input
Tier as consumption falls, and this serves unambiguously to reduce the real
wage.[3]
If domestic (and world) prices of trade middle
products remain constant to the small country, all non-labour inputs in the
Output Tier can be aggregated, a la Hicks, into a composite middle product
input, which serves to convert the production structure in the Output Tier from
an (n+1)-factor, n-commodity specific-factors model into a two-factors,
many-commodity Heckscher-Ohlin model.[3]
In the middle-products model Input Tier is the
existence of a world market in which middle products can be exchanged for each
other that permits such a conversion.[3]
The middle-products model allows countries and sectors
to differ in the extent to which local value must be added to transform middle
products into final commodities, and much depends upon this comparison.
It does not, however, focus upon another question: in à vertical
production structure with many stages, which goods-in-process or middle
products does à country import and which does it export? Two
recent papers have tackled this issue independently and with different
models. Sanyal (1980) assumes that in each of two countries à
commodity is produced in à continuum of stages, with different
Ricardian labor-only input structures. Depending upon technological
differences and relative country size, à cut-off point will be
determined, with one country producing the commodity from raw material stage
to some intermediate point, and then exporting this good-in-process to
the other country where labor is applied to finish the production
process. By contrast, Dixit and Grossman (1982) use à
specific-factors model, with one of the commodities (manufacturing)
produced in à continuum of stages using capital and labor (the other
sector using land and labor) [2].
These stages are arranged such that, as goods-in-process develop towards
the final stage, more labor-intensive techniques are required. Thus with two
countries, the labor-abundant country will tend to specialize in later stages
of the productive spectrum[3].[3]
They analyze how endowment changes alter the cut-off
point, as well as investigating issues related to content protection.[3]
I.II Natural resources
As Chapter 8 in this volume discusses, the normative
question of pricing natural resources (exhaustible or renewable) has received
much attention in the literature of the past decade. The middle-products
approach stresses that some activities, the extraction of natural resources,
must take place locally although international trade then allows other
countries access to these resources. Obviously, comparative advantage
changes over time for countries engaged in exporting exhaustible resource.
In early work Vanek (1963) traced through the changing pattern of United
States trade in natural resources, and suggested that asymmetries in resource
use and availability could account for the Leontief paradox. In à
context of multi-level trade, the costs of recourse extraction in one country
often depend on the availability of foreign capital. Kemp and Ohyama (1978)
have presented à simple model of North - South trade in which
South makes use of Northern capital to develop its resources and
exports these resources to the North where they are used to produce
final commodities[4].
They put their model to use in exploring the normative issue of different
degrees of bargaining strength and ability to exploit via export taxes and
tariffs in the two regions. But the model also stresses the involvement
of capital flows in resource extraction. Schmitz and Helmberger (1979)
argue strongly for complementarity between trade in resources and trade
in capital, à point also stressed by Williams in his 1929 article.
We turn to consider more generally, now, the interaction between trade in
goods and trade in factors.[3]
Addendum 1
Siberia is Among Leaders in Raw Materials Markets[5]
Siberia's rating looks more impressive in some groups
of goods than its 7-th general placing. Split the whole flow of commercial
projects into 9 groups of goods, and for 6 of them Siberia joins the leading
three:
Timber
and Paper
I
Siberia 32.6
II
Moscow 19.1
III
St.-Petersburg 14.2
Fuel
I
Siberia 20.3
II
Urals 13.2
III
Moscow 12.3
Chemical
Products
I
Moscow 17.2
II
Siberia 15.7
III
St.-Petersburg 11.9
Construction
Materials
I
Moscow 22.0
II
Siberia 14.1
III
Urals 5.6
Transportation
I
Moscow 23.6
II
Siberia 12.4
III
Volga 12.1
Metals
I
St.-Petersburg 20.9
II
Urals 19.6
III
Siberia 11.7
Bibliography
1. «The
New Polgrave a dictionary of economic» Editor: J.Eatwell, M.Mmilgate P.Newman
2. Chair
of Raw Material Economy and World Resource Balances Prof. Dr.rer.nat. E.
Machens (temporary appointment)
3. «Positive
Theory of International Trade» Editor: R.W. Jones, J.P. Neary (pages 31-37)
4. «The World Economy History & Prospect» Editor:
W.W Rostow (part 52 «The Future of the World Economy» , pages 610-618)
5. «Siberia is
Among Leaders in Raw Materials Markets»Editors: Alexei Alexeev, Andrey Kiselev
[1] In Jones (1980) a two-country Recardian model is illustrated in
which one commodity requires an intermediate input and technologies differ
between countries The pattern of trade can be reversed as a result of
variations in the price of the traded intermediate.
[2] Both papers cite the use of the
continuum concept in Dornbusch, Fischer, and Samuelson (1977).
[3] À limitation of both
papers is the assumption that costs (or factor proportions) move
monotonically from lower to higher stages of production. If not, trade may take
place à1 many points in the productive spectrum in the absence of inhibiting
transport costs.
[4] This model is described in
simplified terms by Findlay (1979).
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