Who Wins in an Energy Boom? Evidence From Wage Rates and Housing

Abstract

This article presents evidence on the distributional effects of energy extraction by examining the effect of the recent U.S. energy boom on wage rates and housing. The boom increased local wage rates in almost every major occupational category. The increase occurred regardless of whether the occupation experienced a corresponding change in employment, suggesting a tighter labor market that benefited local workers. Wage rates also increased substantially across the entire wage rate distribution, although the percentage increase was slightly higher at the bottom of the distribution than at the top. Local housing values and rental prices both increased, thereby benefiting landowners. For renters, the increase in prices was completely offset by a contemporaneous increase in income. The results suggest that bans on drilling have negative monetary consequences for a large share of local residents. (JEL J23, Q33, R31)

Inexpensive Heating Reduces Winter Mortality

“…Our paper also contributes to the literature on the consequences of shale gas production, specifically on its health effects due to lower energy prices. Previous work in economics has studied local economic effects of shale gas production on job creation and wages (Feyrer et al 2017;Jacobsen 2019), fertility (Kearney and Wilson 2018), and crime (DeLeire et al 2014; Bartik et al forthcoming). Shale gas also affects health through channels besides energy prices.…”

Formation of the Rational Socio-Economic Worldview Based on the Laws of Nature and Society

“…The universal laws, in our opinion, include among others the law of conservation of energy (D. Maxwell, E.S. Bauer); Fibonacci golden ratio law; momentum conservation law; the law of conservation of energy information potential (Bhushan, 2018;Ganicheva, 2018); and the law of accumulation of free energy (Jacobsen, 2019;Shcherbakov, 2019). All of them predetermine and specify the effect of socio-economic laws.…”

Impact of Marcellus and Utica shale exploitation on Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia Regional Economies: A synthetic control analysis

“…James and Smith (2020) note that after excluding the potential overlapped inward spillover effects from nearby producing counties, the US fracking counties generated overall positive economic spillover effects to surrounding counties within 60 to 80 miles. Jacobsen (2019) finds that some shale counties experienced a rise in properties following the boom. However, along with the positive impacts, fracking also created negative externalities to shale-producing regions.…”