Income Factor Shares from Mining in Remote Australia: An Analysis of the Ranger Uranium Mine and the Tanami Gold mine in the Northern Territory

Abstract

While considerable popular and scholarly attention has focused on the impact of the mining boom on the Australian economy, little has been done to assess how the returns from mining are shared between the different factors of production. Using remote case studies from the Northern Territory, this paper finds that labour shares in these instances are higher than their national counterparts, whereas capital shares vary in proportion to labour shares. Land factor share outcomes are mixed, with large returns to a gold mine compared both to its parent company and to a uranium mine. However, it is argued that further case study analysis is necessary to assess the representativeness of the results obtained in this paper.