Mineral-resource mining is a pillar of many state economies and, in many cases, it determines the welfare of the society. The mining of mineral resources provides the market with the raw materials that are traded and drives the economic and social development of countries, although it can also be a source of tensions and crises (e.g. the “curse of wealth”, “Dutch disease”). The trade of raw materials is conducted by exchanges, bilateral deals and other forms of transactions, and is regulated by trade regulations and contract agreements, and in most cases, constitutes a source of income for exporters. In this paper, the use of game-theory modelling for creating the selling price of mineral products on the basis of Polish export quotas for refined copper raw materials is proposed. Using a characteristic function created on the basis of reported export values, possible cooperation arrangements are defined and solutions are calculated for an n-person game of hypothetical coalitions of the major (in terms of volume) recipients of refined Polish copper, i.e. Germany, Italy and France. Alternative markets and possible supplies of cheaper raw material are excluded from the analyses, while the price spread between the rates paid by the buyers is taken into consideration. Among the many possibilities, the game core, the Shapley imputation and the Gately point are arbitrarily adopted as permissible solutions to the defined system. The obtained results are used for a speculative analysis relating to the possibility of renegotiating prices between the producer and recipients of the raw material. Marginal contributions resulting from Shapley’s solution are taken into account as is the power of individual trading-participant coalitions. The paper demonstrates that the recognition and adoption of solutions based on the n-personnel game model as impartial would require the redefinition of contracts and the rates paid for the raw material.

This article proposes an unconventional approach to the division of mining royalties between various administrative units affected by mining activities. Typically, a mining royalty is considered the own income of the units where the exploitation is performed and is usually calculated in relation to the tonnage (volume) of the extracted mineral or the value of the raw material produced. In the article, a different approach has been proposed in order to ensure a useful and fair division of the royalty wherein the unit levy calculation approach was combined with the income criterion using Aumann- Maschler bargaining sets. The case study of the Racibórz II-Reservoir 5 pebble deposit, located within three administrative units (districts) in southern Poland was considered. The exploitation of the deposit within each of the districts requires the separate consent of the local authorities, and in the analyzed case, it is currently conducted in two districts. In terms of income, achievable revenues from exploitation for various alliances of the districts that provide the deposit for mining were calculated. The feasible revenues were transformed into appropriate streams of the mining royalty distribution. It was pointed out that the solutions suggested by the Aumann-Maschler bargaining sets can be treated as a fair division. Proper royalty allocation can be an effective, flexible and important factor in encouraging the district authorities to consent to the exploitation. The adoption of solutions based on the Aumann-Maschler bargaining set will meet the requirement of the full use of mineral resources and is an example of externalities compensation resulting from mining activities.