In Economics the use of Input-Output analysis, General Computable Equilibrium Models and Econometric Models are “traditional” tools used to measure impact. Those techniques have proved to be very helpful in the past to the point that they have become the de-facto standard for such analyses. Underlying those techniques, there are common assumptions regarding the conditions under which the economic agents interact, namely:​ costless symmetric and perfect information;​ additionally economic agents are assumed to be rational decision makers, and in the traditional modelling the use of a representative agent is common. As labour force is changing on its composition and dynamics in the Australian resources industries, new mobility patterns appear, new working arrangements are in place, and these novel elements induce a different dynamical behaviour on the economic agents that are not easy - if not impossible - to model using traditional techniques which are of a more static nature. In particular, the richness and diversity of the multiple ongoing processes which characterise human interactions have little or no chance of being properly modelled using those traditional tools.

Classical tools being based on strong assumptions of the agents’ behaviour naturally induce thinking that the outcomes might not be realistic. In this thesis, an agent based model is proposed as an alternative to the classical modelling tools with the objective of using these novel models motivated by the need to characterise the contribution of mining activities in a regional context.

The model has been implemented and after testing and validating the implementation a case study was undertaken. The case study compared two possible strategies for distributing an ad valorem tax such as “Royalties for Regions” in order to see if they were equivalent or not with the aid of the computational tool. The results obtained indicate that there is a significant difference in impact, as evidenced by the evolution of local multipliers for the different distribution mechanism used. The sectorial mining multiplier remains very stable for the case study considered and this could suggests that eventually the royalty mechanism may not be appropriate as it undermines the multiplier effect of mining without being compensated by any of the distribution mechanisms considered. It is concluded that these results are encouraging as they open up discussion avenues and future explorations in the area, eventually with better equipped computational models, that could inform policy development on one side, and on the other provide the opportunity to put the focus on a different way of measuring and assessing impact.