Concerns about harmful effects arising from the increased use of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to extract underground fuel resources has led to efforts to ban the practice. Many townships in western New York, which lies above the gas-rich Marcellus shale formation, have enacted bans or moratoria. Using spatial econometric techniques, we examine factors related to townships' choice to adopt fracking bans and document the importance of spatial dependence when analyzing fracking bans. We find education levels, the poverty rate, and veterans groups are associated with an increased probability of a township banning or putting a moratorium on fracking.

This dissertation is a discussion on the dynamics of energy and agricultural policy in the United States. The landscape for policy creation, innovation, and the role of government is ever changing as a new energy mix emerges. This study contributes to the academic literature by providing three independent narratives on various aspects of the changing relationship. Each of the three studies provides a unique insight into a narrowly defined aspect of the economics and policy of energy and/or agriculture in the United States. First, consideration is made into the process of policy creation. This is accomplished through a review and synthesis of the literature on the determinants of legislator voting behavior and an econometric regression model. Using a series of legislator-specific, constituent specific and agricultural finance indicators, voting behavior on the 2014 Farm Bill is analyzed through the use of a simple binary logit regression model. Results indicate (along with the results of many other studies) that policy makers do not always act in a way that supports the desires of their constituency, and are often influenced significantly by campaign finance and lobbying. To be more specific, legislators did vote in favor of their constituency, but campaign finance and the state of the agricultural sector played the largest role in their decision making. This has implications for energy policy in general, and the agricultural-energy nexus in particular. Results are compared to those from prior studies which analyze the Farm Bill and similarities are defined.