ABSTRACT
Since many miners are old or live in remote areas and, in any case, have poor prospects of re-employment if they lose their jobs with the Coal Board, it appears to us that the accounting cost of mining labour overstates its cost to the nation. It may sometimes be appropriate to value resources at more or less than their accounting cost. It is commonly alleged that expectations of a faster decline in coal mining would be self-fulfilling since they would cause morale to weaken and this in turn would cause the growth of productivity to slow. Coal would then become less competitive with other fuels and sales would fall. It is not clear that miners are mainly influenced by the prospects for the industry, as distinct from the prospects for the particular pit where they work. A way of estimating future unemployment has been suggested by Haveman and Krutilla.
