China consumed 116 million tonnes of steel in 2000, making it the largest consumer of steel in the world. China differs fundamentally from other countries at similar levels of economic development in that the secondary sector, the traditional consumer of steel products, already accounts for a...

In this paper, we investigate the presence of economies of scale in the global iron-making industry for integrated steel plants, iron making being the first stage in the steel-making process. Iron making depends on basic commodities, such as iron ore, coke and various forms of energy, required...