Industrial processing and location: A study of tin

This paper finds no economic case for greater processing to be carried out in the tin-producing less developed countries (LDCs). First, tin constitutes a necessary but insignificant part in the production of most of the tin-using intermediate products so that the domestic availability of tin per se does not confer an important advantage to the tin-producing LDCs in the production of the intermediate goods. Second, the demand for the final products, which use the tin-using intermediate goods, is strongly related to the level of economic development so that this demand, and so the demand for tin, is not likely to be high in the tin-producing LDCs.