ABSTRACT
The low elasticity of supply for primary copper found gives rise to supply projections that are very different from those made using other econometric models of the U. S. copper industry. The disaggregation of copper and aluminium consumption into several using sectors was found to be very important in determining the fraction of consumption of each metal that will come from recycled material. An increase in energy price causes three separate pressures on secondary-metal production from old scrap. The first, an increase in primary-metal price, provides a positive incentive to recycle, but the other two, an increase in secondary-metal-production cost and a fall in the stocks of scrap available for collection, work in the opposite direction. The need to understand metal-market dynamics and to forecast market conditions is obvious, and forecasts obtained should be of interest to government policy makers as well as to industry long-range planners.
