Productivity in the Mining Industry: Measurement and Interpretation

Staff working paper

This paper by Vernon Topp, Leo Soames, Dean Parham and Harry Bloch was released on 18 December 2008.

Preliminaries (PDF - 119 Kb)
Cover, Copyright, Contents, Preface and Abbreviations
Overview - including key points (PDF - 104 Kb)
1 Introduction (PDF - 66 Kb)
1.1 Background
1.2 Objectives and scope of the paper
2 Mining and its measured productivity (PDF - 212 Kb)
2.1 Australia's mining industry
2.2 Measured productivity of mining
3 Understanding productivity in mining: natural resource inputs (PDF - 202 Kb)
3.1 The input of natural resources
3.2 Optimal extraction, depletion of deposits and productivity
3.3 Evidence of depletion
3.4 Measuring the resource input in productivity estimates
3.5 Results
4 Understanding productivity in mining: purchased inputs (PDF - 117 Kb)
4.1 The structure of mining costs
4.2 The nature of mining capital
4.3 Capital investment and MFP changes
5 Other factors influencing mining MFP (PDF - 231 Kb)
5.1 Increased effort and changes in the quality of inputs
5.2 Technology changes
5.3 Work practices
5.4 Poor weather
5.5 Infrastructure constraints
5.6 Putting the pieces together
6 The big picture: mining, productivity and prosperity (PDF - 94 Kb)
6.1 The contribution of the mining industry to Australia's productivity growth
6.2 The mining boom and national prosperity
6.3 Impact of global economic developments and falling commodity prices
Appendix A Sub-sector results (PDF - 164 Kb)
Appendix B Methodology and data (PDF - 70 Kb)
Appendix C Estimating the contribution of yield changes to mining MFP (PDF - 56 Kb)
References (PDF - 69 Kb)

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