Search Results
Working Paper
The Effect of the Conservation Reserve Program on Rural Economies: Deriving a Statistical Verdict from a Null Finding
This article suggests two methods for deriving a statistical verdict from a null finding,allowing economists to more confidently conclude when ?not significant" can in fact be interpreted as ?no substantive effect." The proposed methodology can be extended to a variety of empirical contexts where size and power matter. The example used to demonstrate the method is the Economic Research Service's 2004 Report to Congress that was charged with statistically identifying any unintended negative employment consequences of the Conservation Reserve Program (the Program). The report failed to ...
Working Paper
Rational but Not Prescient: Borrowing during the Fracking Boom
To study how income expectations affect borrowing, we use leased natural gas rights in Texas in the mid-2000s, which created potential for future leaseholder income without loosening credit constraints. In matching 11,000 leaseholders with non-leaseholders selected from a screened pool of 5.2 million, we find that the average leaseholder borrowed $13,000 more over the 2003–08 leasing boom. A consumption-smoothing modelindicates that leaseholders’ income expectations aligned with forecasts of persistently high natural gas prices. Yet, the unforeseeable success of fracking was associated ...
Working Paper
Response of Consumer Debt to Income Shocks: The Case of Energy Booms and Busts
This paper investigates how consumers respond to local income shocks as a result of booms and busts in oil and gas development. Oil and gas development generates potentially large streams of income via wages and salaries to workers and royalty income to mineral rights owners. Changes in development may lead consumers to increase their spending depending on their exposure to income shocks. Using quarterly information on consumer debt and oil and gas activity, I ?nd that consumer debt increased at a peak of $840 per capita in counties with shale endowment and increased drilling. Each well ...
Journal Article
U.S. Business Applications Surge in the Face of COVID-19
Business formation in the United States has been on a decline for several decades. Most prior economic recessions have accelerated this trend. However, the recent economic downturn associated with COVID-19 appears to have had the opposite effect: business formation, as measured by business applications, has actually surged since late May.
Journal Article
Production of natural gas from shale in local economies: a resource blessing or curse?
Innovations in the energy sector, particularly the extraction of natural gas from shale and tight gas formations using horizontal drilling and "fracking," have helped increase U.S. reserves of natural gas to an estimated 70 years' worth of supply. Some theories suggest such a boom leads to a local resource "blessing" in employment and a positive spillover into the local economy while others suggest a boom leads to a resource "curse" for industries not related to the energy sector. Brown examines county-level labor market conditions in the central United States and finds a modest ...
Working Paper
Asset Ownership, Windfalls, and Income: Evidence from Oil and Gas Royalties
How does local versus absentee ownership of natural resources?and their associated income?shape the relationship between extraction and local income? Theory and empirics on natural resources and the broader economy have focused heavily on labor markets, largely ignoring the economic implications of payments to resource owners. We study how local ownership of oil and gas rights shapes the local income effects of extraction. For the average U.S. county that experienced an increase in oil and gas production from 2000 to 2013, increased royalty income and its associated economic stimulus ...
Working Paper
Rising Market Concentration and the Decline of Food Price Shock Pass-Through to Core Inflation
Using a vector autoregression that allows for time-varying parameters and stochastic volatility, we show that U.S. core inflation became 75 percent less responsive to shocks in food prices since the late 1970s. The decline in the pass-through of food price shocks to inflation is a result of a decline in both volatility and the persistence of food price changes in inflation. This decline in pass-through coincides with a period of increasing concentration in the food supply chain, especially among U.S. grocery retailers and distributors. We find that 60 percent of the variation in pass-through ...
Journal Article
Kansas and Missouri economies
The Kansas and Missouri economies grew during the spring of 2013. Employment growth was positive in both states, while their unemployment rates stayed flat. Residential real estate conditions continued to improve, and farmland values grew in the first quarter, but expectations for future incomes weakened.
Working Paper
Economic Benefits and Social Costs of Legalizing Recreational Marijuana
We analyze the effects of legalizing recreational marijuana on state economic and social outcomes (2000–20) using difference-in-differences estimation robust to staggered timing and heterogeneity of treatment. We find moderate economic gains accompanied by some social costs. Post-legalization, average state income grew by 3 percent, house prices by 6 percent, and population by 2 percent. However, substance use disorders, chronic homelessness, and arrests increased by 17, 35, and 13 percent, respectively. Although some of our estimates are noisy, our findings suggest that the economic ...