Opening mines under the risk of geoeconomic fragmentation: a real-option approach

This article examines the economic rationale for opening new mines to extract critical raw materials (CRMs) in Europe, in search of strategic autonomy. We use a real-option framework to analyse a government's decision on the optimal timing of such an investment, taking into account mineral prices and domestic economic activity. The model incorporates geoeconomic fragmentation risk as a source of uncertainty that materializes as jumps in CRM prices. While uncertainty would be expected to delay the start of mining operations, our results show that a countervailing effect also exists, which increases the expected value of the developed mine. Furthermore, we show that the development of recycling does not clarify whether advancing extraction is ultimately socially desirable, underscoring the ambiguous theoretical implications of an expanding supply of secondary materials.