ABSTRACT
This chapter overviews the general nature of the various types of return identified in the literature and relates them to the mineral industries. The nature of mining is that it displays short run returns having characteristics which, if they are not peculiar to this industry, are at least prominent in it. In relation to mining, increasing returns to technological change have been of great significance over the past two centuries, involving factors such as changes in the technologies of extraction, mineral processing and transport. Like returns to technological change, returns to scale are, for heuristic purposes, here considered to have no role in the determination of the nature of the return on the extensive margin. In the modern theoretical literature dealing with the economics of mineral extraction, the mineral industries are typified as displaying decreasing return on the extensive margin and increasing return with respect to technological change and to scale.
