Factors Influencing Mine Location: An Iron Ore Example
通过铁矿石案例，指出矿石质量和运输成本是矿山选址的主要决定因素，而税收、环境法规等政治因素常被公众过度关注，但实际影响较小。
When a mine is threatened with closure, ensuing publicity generally focuses on the burden of mineral taxes, environmental regulations, and labor's excessive fringe benefits as decisive factors behind the shutdown.1 But despite this emphasis, such factors are usually only secondary locational determinants for mining operations. Ore quality and transportation costs have proven to be considerably more important in other case studies (Tull 1979), as they do in this analysis of iron ore mining. Still, there is a very practical reason why public debate consistently neglects these primary determinants; public policy decision makers can change taxes, pollution standards, and workmen's compensation rates, but there is no way a vote can alter ore quality or the geographic location of a deposit. This tends to be the case not only for minerals but for many other natural resource products as well. Unfortunately, if the politically influenced but less important locational factors are given too much attention, inequities can arise. The apparent benefits of reduced state taxes, for example, can be exaggerated if such reductions are not put into the proper perspective of their true share of full mining costs and compared to those of competing mines in other states. PRESENT CASE