Management of non-renewable natural resources: Market balance, socio-economic impacts and potential channels of resource curse -An application to Phosphate-.

Summary This thesis examines the sustainable management of non-renewable resources in general and rock phosphate in particular. The first chapter outlines the status, prospects and economic and geopolitical issues of the world phosphate market. This analysis highlights a significant long-term deficit in world supply compared to demand, encouraging phosphate producers, who have sufficient reserves, to invest in new capacities. The second chapter develops a multi-player Stackelberg model, calibrated on actual phosphate market data, and allows the calculation of the optimal capacities to be put in place by producers according to their reserve levels and development costs. The results of this model show that the market would become more concentrated in 2100 than it is today, with Morocco, the country that holds three quarters of the world's reserves, dominating. The third chapter aims to assess the spillover effects that Morocco generates from its phosphate exploitation. Using the Input-Output model, the proposed empirical analysis compares the socio-economic impacts of extraction with those of beneficiation or processing. The results of this analysis show that phosphate processing is more connected upstream with other branches of the economy and generates more value added, income and employment. The last chapter attempts to address the issue of the natural resource curse in a new way by linking agricultural performance and urbanization to the abundance of these resources. The empirical study, based on a panel of African countries, shows a significant link between the abundance of mineral resources, the underdevelopment of the agricultural sector and the urban explosion.