Simulation based micro-founded structural market analysis : a case study of the copper industry

Abstract

This work aims to provide a widely applicable modeling framework that can be used to credibly investigate materials scarcity risks for various types of commodities. Different from existing literature, this work contributes to a better understanding of commodity scarcity risk, specifically copper future consumption on several fronts. Firstly, it introduces an elaborate price mechanism absent in comparable materials flow assessment. It teases out short term and long term substitution, allowing consumers to switch from one type of commodity to another based on price signals and their respective price elasticities of demand. Secondly, the model allows for individual deposit tracking, which allows the modeler to extract ore grade information as a function of consumption and reserve size. Thirdly, it models the supply side on an agent-based basis, allowing for aggregation of granular information, capturing potential emergent phenomena. We believe these three aspects, which are least addressed (none of existing work has addressed the first aspect, and few have addressed the second or the third), are important in assessing scarcity risks. Without them, scarcity assessment is likely to be biased. We hope our work may serve as some sort of foundation upon which more reliable future work on mineral scarcity evaluation can be carried out.