IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/hal-04452384.html

Evaluating criticality of strategic metals: Are the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index and usual concentration thresholds still relevant?

Author

Listed:
  • Pauline Bucciarelli

    (IFPEN - IFP Energies nouvelles, EconomiX - EconomiX - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Emmanuel Hache

    (IFPEN - IFP Energies nouvelles, EconomiX - EconomiX - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, IRIS - Institut de Relations Internationales et Stratégiques)

  • Valérie Mignon

    (EconomiX - EconomiX - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CEPII - Centre d'Etudes Prospectives et d'Informations Internationales - Centre d'analyse stratégique)

Abstract

This paper aims to evaluate the criticality of strategic metals by (i) investigating the validity of the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) for assessing the supply risk aspect of criticality and (ii) determining an appropriate threshold for using this indicator in the context of criticality studies. Relying on a large panel of 33 strategic metals over the 1995-2021 period, our findings show that the variation of HHI has more impact on metal prices at lower HHI levels and question the existence of a threshold that clearly distinguishes high-risk markets from less risky ones based on their concentration levels. Overall, we show that using the HHI as a supply risk indicator, especially in conjunction with a threshold, may result in underestimating risks in less concentrated markets.

Suggested Citation

  • Pauline Bucciarelli & Emmanuel Hache & Valérie Mignon, 2023. "Evaluating criticality of strategic metals: Are the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index and usual concentration thresholds still relevant?," Working Papers hal-04452384, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-04452384
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04452384v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.science/hal-04452384v1/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Richard Schmitz & Franziska Flachsbarth & Leonie Sara Plaga & Martin Braun & Philipp Hartel, 2025. "Energy Security and Resilience: Reviewing Concepts and Advancing Planning Perspectives for Transforming Integrated Energy Systems," Papers 2504.18396, arXiv.org.
    3. Jean-Baptiste Hasse & Capucine Nobletz, 2024. "Critical Raw Materials Index -CRMI," Working Papers hal-04759077, HAL.
    4. Feix, Thibaut & Hache, Emmanuel, 2025. "Cumulative Energy Demand and Global Warming Potential of metals and minerals production: Assessment, projections and mitigation options," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    5. Hugo Daniel García Juárez & Jose Carlos Montes Ninaquispe & Sandra Lizzette León Luyo & Heyner Yuliano Marquez Yauri & Carlos Enrique Mendoza Ocaña & Nelly Victoria De La Cruz Ruiz & Sarita Jessica Ap, 2025. "Competitiveness and Diversification in Grape Exports: Keys to Their Sustainability in Global Markets," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 15(17), pages 1-21, September.
    6. Jingxin Nie & Tiantian Li & Tianming Zheng, 2025. "How Does the Scale and Functional Diversity of the Innovation Cooperation Network Affect Local Innovation? Township-Level Evidence from Beijing," Land, MDPI, vol. 14(5), pages 1-24, May.
    7. Faubert Violaine & Nathan Guess & Julien Le Roux, 2024. "Capital in the Twenty-First Century: Who Owns the Capital of Firms Producing Critical Raw Materials?," Working papers 952, Banque de France.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • Q02 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - General - - - Commodity Market
    • Q34 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation - - - Natural Resources and Domestic and International Conflicts
    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • C24 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Truncated and Censored Models; Switching Regression Models; Threshold Regression Models

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-04452384. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.