the effect of tax treaties on multinational firms new evidence from microdata this paper uses affiliate level data from swedish multinationals to examine the impact of tax treaties on both overall affiliate sales and the composition of those sales in line with previous results we find little evidence for an effect of treaties on the level of total sales we do however find that a tax treaty increases the probability of investment by a firm in a given country in addition we find that a treaty reduces exports to the parent but increases imports of intermediate inputs from the parent this is consistent with treaties increasing the effective host tax this suggests that tax treaties impact the behavior of multinationals along some dimensions but not along others

natural resources and sub national economic performance does sub national democracy matter abstract the differentiation in the impact of resources on economic growth is often explained by the specifics of institutional factors the aim of this paper is to investigate how sub national political differences influence the effect of natural resources on economic growth using a dataset of russian regions this paper demonstrates that sub national democratization influences the growth effects of resources and considers possible mechanisms for this influence the paper finds that in russia natural resources are only capable of promoting growth in the regions with non democratic political systems that at the same time have an efficient and non corrupt bureaucracy

can the us shale revolution be duplicated in continental europe an economic analysis of european shale gas resources abstract over the past decade the rapid increase in shale gas and shale oil production in the united states has profoundly changed energy markets in north america and has led to a significant decrease in american natural gas prices the possible existence of large shale deposits in continental europe mainly in france denmark the netherlands and germany has fostered speculation on whether the u s shale revolution could be duplicated in europe however a number of uncertainties notably geological technological regulatory and relating to public acceptance make this possibility unclear we present a techno economic model of shale gas production amenable to direct estimation on historical production data to analyze the main determinants of the profitability of shale wells and plays we contribute an in depth analysis of an extensive production dataset covering 40 000 wells and accounting for nearly 90 of shale gas production in the six main plays of the continental united states from 2004 to 2014 we combine this analysis with a discussion of the main differences between the american and european contexts to calibrate our model and conduct monte carlo simulations this enables us to estimate the distribution of breakeven prices for shale gas extraction in continental europe we find a median gross breakeven price before taxes and royalties of 10 1 per mmbtu this would make extraction unprofitable in europe in the current natural gas price environment with

how hurricanes affect wages and employment in local labor markets currently a growing literature is emerging on estimating the impact of exogenous shocks using the difference in difference dd tech nique essentially this technique compares the impact of an unexpected event in a particu lar locale called the treatment experimental group to a location or set of locations called a control group similar to the experimental group in all respects except for the shock itself one challenge many dd studies face is how to choose the control group and there is now a growing literature on this joshua a angrist and alan b krueger 1999 jeffrey d kubik and john r moran 2003 and alberto abadie alexis diamond and jens hainmueller 2007 another challenge is whether one can general ize one s results based on a single experimental group as is typical for most dd analysis this paper adopts a generalized difference in dif ference gdd technique outlined in ariel r belasen and solomon w polachek forthcom ing to examine the impact of hurricanes on the labor market this technique incorporates many experimental as well as many control groups and as such this approach addresses a number of shortcomings in current dd analyses we find that earnings of the average worker in a florida county rise over 4 percent within the first quarter of being hit by a major category four or five hur ricane relative to counties not hit and rise about wa percent for workers in florida counties hit by less major category one to three hurricanes concomitantly employment falls between wi and 5 percent depending on hurricane strength on the other hand the effects of hurricanes on neighboring counties have the opposite effects moving earnings down between 3 and 4 percent in the quarter the hurricane struck to better examine the specific shocks we also observe sectoral employment shifts finally we conduct a time series analysis and find that over time there is somewhat of a cobweb with earnings and employment rising and falling each quarter over a two year time period

social networks and the mass media how do global sources of information such as mass media outlets state propaganda ngos and national party leadership affect aggregate behavior prior work on this question has insufficiently considered the complex interaction between social network and mass media influences on individual behavior by explicitly modeling this interaction i show that social network structure conditions media s impact empirical studies of media effects that fail to consider this risk bias further social network interactions can amplify media bias leading to large swings in aggregate behavior made more severe when individuals can select into media matching their preferences countervailing media outlets and social elites with unified preferences can mitigate the effect of bias however media outlets promulgating antistatus quo bias have an advantage theoretical results such as these generate numerous testable hypotheses i provide guidelines for deriving and testing hypotheses from the model and discuss several such hypotheses

optimal trade policy under oligopoly a calibrated model of the europe japan rivalry in the eec car market this paper was originally presented at the cefi conference on imperfect competition and international trade aix en provence france june 18 19 1987 we wish to thank avinash dixit who gave the initial impetus to this research we are also grateful to alexis jacquemin and paul krugman for valuable discussion and comments we thank also the french commissariat au plan for financial support and the chambre syndicale des constructeurs automobiles csca for gracious assistance

strategic behaviour and the rules for international taxation of capital this paper examines the welfare of a capital exporting or source country and a capital importing or host country under tax credit and tax deduction systems for the international taxation of capital because the two tax systems may create quite different strategic incentives for the countries the authors compare the equilibria in the tax setting game played by the two countries under each system they find that the tax credits system introduces an antitrade bias into the equilibrium contrary to initial impressions and that both capital exporting and capital importing countries will prefer the tax deductions scheme to tax credits copyright 1989 by royal economic society

storms and jobs the effect of hurricanes on individuals employment and earnings over the long term hurricanes katrina and rita devastated the us gulf coast in 2005 we use job level data to compare the evolution of earnings for affected workers in four states with workers from matched control co

fracking and environmental in justice in a texas city abstract shale gas development sgd via horizontal drilling and fracking is touted for economic benefits and spurned for health and environmental impacts despite sgd s socioecological salience few peer reviewed empirical studies document the distribution of positive and negative effects the city of denton texas has 280 active gas wells and over a decade of sgd here we use an environmental justice framework to analyze the distribution of sgd s costs and benefits within denton using data on mineral property values from 2002 to 2013 and gas well locations we ask who owns denton s mineral rights i e the greatest financial beneficiaries and how does this ownership pattern relate to who lives near gas wells i e those who shoulder the nuisances and health impacts our results show that denton s mineral wealth is widely distributed around the u s residents own 1 of the total value extracted and the city government is a large financial beneficiary in addition to distributional inequities our analysis demonstrates that split estate doctrine legal deference to mineral owners and sgd s uniqueness in urban centers create disparities in municipal sgd decision making processes the environmental justice issues associated with fracking in denton also provide one possible explanation for residents november 2014 vote to ban hydraulic fracturing

labeling renewable energies how the language surrounding biofuels can influence its public acceptance abstract despite growing interest and investments in biological fuels little is known of how the public form opinions toward this alternative fuel technology this study examines public opinion of biofuels by focusing on several factors that can be expected to influence citizens opinions about the issue first we tested the results of a framing experiment that was embedded within a public opinion survey this experiment explored how the public responded to the term biofuels as compared to the term ethanol our results suggest that overall respondents tended to react more favorably to the former as opposed to the latter term second we examined the impacts of sociodemographics on public attitudes toward biofuels we found that while sociodemographics did little to consistently explain attitudes toward biofuels there was clear evidence of ideological influences on attitudes with self identifying democrats showing more positive attitudes overall finally we explored the interaction between political partisanship and our experimental manipulation we found evidence that our wording manipulation differed based on the political party identification of our respondents with democrats fluctuating greatly in their assessments depending upon whether they were asked to evaluate biofuels or ethanol

uninformed votes information effects in presidential elections theory recent scholarship has emphasized the potential importance of cues information shortcuts and statistical aggregation processes in allowing relatively uninformed citizens to act individually or collectively as if they were fully informed hypotheses uninformed voters successfully use cues and information shortcuts to behave as if they were fully informed failing that individual deviations from fully informed voting cancel out in a mass electorate producing the same aggregate election outcome as if voters were fully informed methods hypothetical fully informed vote choices are imputed to individual voters using the observed relationship between political information and vote choices for voters with similar social and demographic characteristics estimated by probit analysis of data from national election study surveys conducted after the six most recent united states presidential elections results both hypotheses are clearly disconfirmed at the individual level the average deviation of actual vote probabilities from hypothetical fully informed vote probabilities was about ten percentage points in the electorate as a whole these deviations were significantly diluted by aggregation but by no means eliminated incumbent presidents did almost five percentage points better and democratic candidates did almost two percentage points better than they would have if voters had in fact been fully informed

an economic impact report of shale gas extraction in pennsylvania with stricter assumptions abstract during the onset of shale gas development a variety of economic impact studies were released through the gray literature without formal peer review in a review of six such impact reports kinnaman 2011 speculates about several major issues worth scrutiny arising with analysis using input output models his central critique focuses on the assumptions of how industry spending is represented and how leasing and royalty dollars are spent in this study we use detailed county records and results from a survey to directly address these assumptions and compare our results to the findings in an economic impact study of marcellus shale development in pennsylvania which kinnaman critiqued our results which are only about 52 of the prior study confirm his supposition that some ex ante studies use unrealistic assumptions which lead to gross overestimates of the impacts

taxing foreign profits with international mergers and acquisitions a large part of border crossing investment takes the form of international mergers and acquisitions in this article we ask how optimal repatriation tax systems look like in a world where investment involves a change of ownership instead of a reallocation of real capital we find that the standard results of international taxation do not carry over to the case of international mergers and acquisitions the deduction system is no longer optimal from a national perspective and the foreign tax credit system fails to ensure global optimality the tax exemption system is optimal if ownership advantage is a public good within the multinational firm however the cross border cash flow tax system dominates the exemption system in terms of optimality properties

who wins in an energy boom evidence from wage rates and housing 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

employment impacts of upstream oil and gas investment in the united states abstract we use dynamic panel methods at the state level to understand how the increase in exploration and production of oil and natural gas since the mid 2000s has impacted employment we find robust statistical support for the hypothesis that changes in drilling do in fact have an economically meaningful and positive impact on employment the strongest impact is contemporaneous though months later in the year also experience statistically and economically meaningful growth once dynamic effects are accounted for we estimate that an additional rig count results in the creation of 31 jobs immediately and 315 jobs in the long run robustness checks suggest that these multipliers could be even bigger our results imply that the national impact of upstream investment remains small perhaps due to the sector s small size and inter state migration

foreign direct investment with unemployment and endogenous taxes and tariffs it is well known that high tariffs can induce foreign direct investment or tariff jumping this paper analyzes tariff jumping in the context of a host government which can set specific tariffs and taxes subject to the credibility constraint that the chosen levels be optimal once capital is irreversibly in place the foreign multinational is assumed to choose its location and level of investment strategically taking into account the induced tax and tariff levels in the presence of unemployment the optimal tariff exceeds the optimal tax for any given level of capital investment leading to foreign direct investment

geographic dispersion of economic shocks evidence from the fracking revolution abstract we track the geographic and temporal propagation of local economic shocks from new oil and gas production generated by hydrofracturing each million dollars of new production produces 80 000 in wage income and 132 000 in royalty and business income within a county within 100 miles one million dollars of new production generates 257 000 in wages and 286 000 in royalty and business income roughly two thirds of the wage income increase persists for two years assuming no general equilibrium effects new extraction increased aggregate us employment by as many as 640 000 and decreased the unemployment rate by 0 43 during the great recession jel d86 l14 l81 l82

corporate tax systems multinational enterprises and economic integration abstract multinational firms are known to shift profits and countries are known to compete over shifty profits two major principles for corporate taxation are separate accounting sa and formula apportionment fa these two principles have very different qualities when it comes to preventing profit shifting and preserving national tax autonomy most oecd countries use sa in this paper we show that a reduction in trade barriers lowers equilibrium corporate taxes under sa but leads to higher taxes under fa from a welfare point of view the choice of tax principle is shown to depend on the degree of economic integration

public opinion on energy development the interplay of issue framing top of mind associations and political ideology in this article we examine framing effects regarding unconventional oil and gas extraction using hydraulic fracturing or fracking an issue involving considerable controversy over potential impacts as well as terminology used to describe it specifically we explore how two commonly used terms to describe this issue fracking or shale oil or gas development serve as issue frames and influence public opinion extending existing research we suggest that these frames elicit different top of mind associations that reflect positive or negative connotations and resonate with people s political ideology these associations in turn help explain direct and indirect framing effects on support opposition as well as whether these effects differ by political ideology results of a split ballot national u s survey n 1000 reveal that people are more supportive of the energy extraction process when it is referred to as shale oil or gas development versus fracking and this relationship is mediated by greater perceptions of benefit versus risk political ideology did not moderate these effects further analysis suggests that these findings are partly explained by the tendency to associate fracking more with negative thoughts and impacts and shale oil or gas development more with positive thoughts and impacts however these associations also did not vary by political ideology we discuss implications for communicating risk regarding energy development

local high tech job multipliers in europe examining employment growth in local labor markets across europe this article finds that each worker in a high skilled occupation creates up to five extra jobs in local less skilled intensive services in the same region however it is also shown that there exist persistent differences in the size of this local high tech job multiplier across regions in particular we find that the multiplier is larger in regions with higher immigration an abundance of less skilled workers and lower gross output per capita at the country level we also show that this results in local high tech job multipliers that are larger in southern european countries than in the rest of europe

the taxing task of taxing transnationals financial and real investment flexibility tax competition and superior economic information by transnationals both create a rationale for corporate income taxation and limit the effectiveness of such taxation while these factors have led to a variety of transnational tax policies such as deferral double taxation apportionment and trade rules very few of these institutional features have been integrated into tax competition and agency models in this paper i show how the integration of investment flexibility tax competition and agency issues is crucial to our understanding of corporate tax policies

taxes tariffs and the global corporation in this paper we develop some simple models of optimal tax and tariff policy in the presence of global corporations that operate in an imperfectly competitive environment the models emphasize two important differences in the practical application of tax and tariff policy tax but not tariff policy can apply to offshore output and tariff but not tax policy can be industryspecific recognizing that multinationals production decisions are endogenous to the tax and tariff policies they face we investigate how a government should tax or subsidize domestically owned firms and how government should set trade policy

do changes in oil prices affect welfare programs evidence from kern county abstract in this paper the intertemporal causal relationship between oil prices and welfare programs in kern county is studied using monthly data between 1999 7 and 2016 8 results from the autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds testing approach show that there is stable long run equilibrium relationship between calfresh caseloads oil prices and unemployment they also show that adjustment in calfresh participation due to changes in oil prices and unemployment is slow and a 10 increase in unemployment led to a 3 3 increase in calfresh enrollment results from a modified granger causality method indicated causality running from unemployment to calworks and no causality from oil prices to calworks participation the girf confirmed that calworks is more responsive to changes in unemployment than to oil price shocks the fevdc results demonstrated that contributions of the oil price shocks in explaining variations in calworks were negligible

the silver lining of red tape abstract an increasing number of international agreements require non discrimination from their participants i e the government of one country cannot treat foreign firms differently from domestic firms this is at odds with a government s desire to benefit its own citizens rather than foreign citizens i show that the use of red tape a wasteful application process can achieve de facto discrimination key to this result is firm heterogeneity since although the red tape cost is the same across firms only those sufficiently benefiting from an incentive program will find it worth the cost of applying if the benefits of targeting subsidies outweigh the burden of red tape red tape will be used

i can hear my neighbors fracking the effect of natural gas production on housing values in tarrant county tx abstract in this study we estimate the effect of hydraulically fractured natural gas wells on residential real estate prices we exploit variation in distance to nearby gas wells in home sale prices to estimate this effect in contrast to previous studies we focus on a relatively densely populated area a section of the dallas ft worth arlington urban area using a dataset of 127 556 observations from tarrant county texas over the period 2005 2011 we find robust evidence that increased proximity to a well leads to reduced home sale prices existence of wells within 3500 ft of a property reduces property values by approximately 1 5 3 we demonstrate that the reduction seems to be driven by unconventional rather than conventional wells and that well construction causes an added 1 2 reduction in home value

decentralization and transfer pricing under oligopoly this paper presents a simple model of a partially decentralized multinational firm mnf in competition with a rival firm it is shown that transfer pricing can be used as a rent shifting device by the mnf to compete with the rival this arises because the mnf headquarters uses the transfer price to manage different subsidiaries the specific value of the transfer price chosen by the mnf depends on whether the rival firm produces the intermediate good the final good or both and whether the rival is integrated or not in particular both decentralization and competition with a fully integrated rival result in lower transfer prices

the economic impact of the coal boom and bust in this paper we examine the impact of the coal boom in the 1970s and the subsequent coal bust in the 1980s on local labour markets in kentucky ohio pennsylvania and west virginia we address two main questions in our analysis how were non mining sectors affected by the shocks to the mining sector how did these effects differ between sectors producing local goods and those producing traded goods we find evidence of modest employment spillovers into sectors with locally traded goods but not into sectors with nationally traded goods

the economic impact of shale gas extraction a review of existing studies abstract recent advances in drilling technology have allowed for the profitable extraction of natural gas from deep underground shale rock formations several reports sponsored by the gas industry have estimated the economic effects of the shale gas extraction on incomes employment and tax revenues none of these reports has been published in an economics journal and therefore have not been subjected to the peer review process yet these reports may be influential to the formation of public policy this commentary provides written reviews of several studies purporting to estimate the economic impact of gas extraction from shale beds due to questionable assumptions the economic impacts estimated in these reports are very likely overstated

the new york times and the market for local newspapers recent technological advances have dramatically lowered the cost of transmitting information over large distances in the late 1990s the new york times implemented a national distribution strategy expanding delivery in over 100 cities using cross sectional and longitudinal data on local newspaper circulation times penetration and local newspapers characteristics we find that as times circulation grows in a market local newspaper circulation declines among college educated readers local newspapers reposition toward local and away from national coverage raising circulation among individuals without a degree availability of national newspapers in local markets changes the relationship between local preferences and local products

the alaskan labor market during the pipeline era built between 1974 and 1977 the trans alaska pipeline was the largest privately financed construction project in world history the alaskan labor market during the pipeline era provides an ideal opportunity to view labor market responses to a large anticipated and temporary shock to labor demand the paper presents several theoretical models of market responses to temporary demand shocks and then assesses the ability of each model to explain the alaskan data among the findings are that alaskan wages were very flexible labor supply was quite elastic on both the intensive hours per worker and extensive number of workers margins and even a major short run demand shock need not have a long run impact

the distributional impacts of an energy boom in western canada in the energy rich region of western canada inequality rose over the past two decades while poverty declined begging the question of whether the recent energy boom was a contributing factor this study uses measures of inequality and poverty across local labor markets that vary in energy extraction intensity to identify these distributional impacts the evidence shows that overall the boom increased inequality and decreased poverty there are however a few notable cases where these relationships are reversed the significance and relative magnitude of growth across and between distributional segments were consistent with these findings

collective action and network structure i develop and analyze a mathematical model describing the relationship between individual contributions to a collective good and the network of social relations that makes these contributions interdependent starting from the assumption that actors respond to the contributions of others because of efficacy concerns and norms offairness i derive predictions about the impact of network structure on total contributions network density and size influence collective action outcomes in dramatically different ways depending on the structural position of those who make unconditional contributions moreover these effects are highly nonlinear suggesting that the impact of social ties on collective action may be quite sensitive to mobilization contexts

can capital income taxes survive in open economies optimal tax theory forecasts that small open economies should not tax capital income yet countries do tax capital income why the inconsistency this paper shows that use of the double taxation convention whereby governments credit taxes paid abroad against domestic taxes helps explain this inconsistency in particular capital income will be taxed if a dominant capital exporter acts as a stackelberg leader when setting its tax policy due to the convention other countries will then tax capital imports making it attractive for the dominant capital exporter to tax capital income without a dominant capital exporter however the model still forecasts no capital income taxes can taxation of capital income survive the increasing integration of world capital markets a number of recent papers suggest not diamond and mirrlees 1971 for example showed that a small open economy would not choose to tax the income generated by the physical capital located within the country this is because production would occur efficiently under an optimal tax system which requires that domestic investments earn the rate of return available on the world capital market in principle a country might still attempt to tax income earned on the savings of its residents however in practice income from savings invested outside the country is virtually impossible for a government to monitor individuals therefore can evade tax on such savings with very little risk as razin and sadka 1989 show such capital flight in theory eliminates any possibility of a tax on savings investors will simply transfer their funds abroad to avoid taxation yet virtually all countries do in fact tax the capital income earned by corporations and individuals located within their borders how can the theoretical forecast of no capital income taxation be reconciled with this simple observation it is difficult to use existing models with any confidence to analyze the implications of changes in capital income tax rates if these same models forecast that countries should never tax capital income

what goes up must come down the recent economic cycles of the four most oil and gas dominated states in the us abstract the recent boom and bust in the us oil and natural gas sector provide a unique opportunity to assess whether the impacts of energy development are symmetric across the differing phases of the energy cycle this study uses the synthetic control method to examine the boom and bust effects for the four most oil and gas dominated states louisiana north dakota oklahoma and wyoming the four states are chosen as case studies because of their status as top oil and gas producers and the stronger influence of the oil and gas sector on their overall economies the results reveal differing employment impacts across the four states in both the short and long run and asymmetry during the boom and bust phases variation in the overall impacts and asymmetry of impacts across the boom bust cycle are suggested to be at least in part connected to state and local government expenditures

labor market impacts of u s tight oil development the case of the bakken abstract there has been a recent boom in natural gas and oil production in the us due to high energy prices and technological advances in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling while north dakota oil production has increased significantly since 2005 with the development of bakken formation the impact on the rest of the economy including agriculture historically the largest industry in north dakota has received little attention we employ a variant of the corden neary resource development model to test the impact of the oil boom in north dakota caused by technical change on employment and wages in two tradable sectors of the state economy agriculture and energy alongside the rest of the state s economy using a vector error correction vec model marking the very first use of the dynamic vector autoregression var analysis in this theoretical framework it was determined that the oil boom as represented by the number of rigs in the state led to an increase in employment and wages in energy sector as expected but also in the rest of the economy oil development activity had no significant impact on agricultural wages both energy sector equations employment and wage suggest relative independence of these variables from the movements in agriculture and the rest of the economy and being impacted mostly by the changes in energy sector itself seasonality does not play significant role in energy sector employment and wages unlike in agriculture and the rest of the economy

television and voter turnout i use variation across markets in the timing of television s introduction to identify its impact on voter turnout the estimated effect is significantly negative accounting for between a quarter and a half of the total decline in turnout since the 1950s i argue that substitution away from other media with more political coverage provides a plausible mechanism linking television to voting as evidence for this i show that the entry of television in a market coincided with sharp drops in consumption of newspapers and radio and in political knowledge as measured by election surveys i also show that both the information and turnout effects were largest in off year congressional elections which receive extensive coverage in newspapers but little or no coverage on television

the oecd model tax treaty tax competition and two way capital flows model tax treaties do not require tax rate coordination but do require that either credits or exemptions be applied to repatriated earnings this contradicts recent models with a single capital exporter where deductions are most efficient i incorporate the fact that capital flows are typically bilateral with symmetric countries credits by both is the unique and efficient treaty equilibrium this equilibrium weakly dominates the nontreaty equilibrium with asymmetric countries the treaty need not offer improvements without tax harmonization with harmonization it is always possible to reach efficient capital allocations while increasing both countries welfares only if neither uses deductions

the effects of a natural gas boom on employment and income in colorado texas and wyoming improvements in technology have made it profitable to tap unconventional gas reservoirs in relatively impermeable shale and sandstone deposits which are spread throughout the u s mostly in rural areas proponents of gas drilling point to the activity s local economic benefits yet no empirical studies have systematically documented the magnitude or distribution of economic gains i estimate these gains for counties in colorado texas and wyoming three states where natural gas production expanded substantially since the late 1990s i find that a large increase in the value of gas production caused modest increases in employment wage and salary income and median household income the results suggest that each million dollars in gas production created 2 35 jobs in the county of production which led to an annualized increase in employment that was 1 5 of the pre boom level for the average gas boom county comparisons show that ex ante estimates of the number of jobs created by developing the fayetteville and marcellus shale gas formations may have been too large

local labor market impacts of energy boom bust boom in western canada abstract the impacts of energy price boom and bust are analyzed through the differential growth in employment and earnings between local labor markets with and without energy resources in western canada the estimated differentials attributed to the boom induced labor demand shocks show significant direct and indirect impacts on the earnings and employment within the energy extraction and other non energy local sectors respectively the local job multipliers indicate that job creation within the energy extraction sector leads to modest job creation within the non energy local sectors during boom periods for every ten energy extraction jobs created during a boom period approximately three construction jobs two retail jobs and four and a half service jobs are created

local labor markets and natural resources a synthesis of the literature a primary way that natural resources affect a locality is through the demand for labor with greater extraction requiring more workers shifts in labor demand can be measured through changes in employment and earnings the main labor market outcomes or through changes in the population and income more generally these changes may spillover into the nonresource economy leading to greater overall effects or possibly crowd out be spread unequally across the population thereby altering the distribution of income and the poverty rate or influence educational attainment as people choose between additional schooling and work in this review the literature linking natural resources to local labor markets is synthesized by organizing existing studies according to their resource measurement and the outcomes that they consider this synthesis provides an accessible guide to a literature that has boomed in recent years it also identifies promising avenues for future research and lays a foundation to further generalize the evidence through an eventual meta analysis

the market for news we investigate the market for news under two assumptions that readers hold beliefs which they like to see confirmed and that newspapers can slant stories toward these beliefs we show that on the topics where readers share common beliefs one should not expect accuracy even from competitive media competition results in lower prices but common slanting toward reader biases on topics where reader beliefs diverge such as politically divisive issues however newspapers segment the market and slant toward extreme positions yet in the aggregate a reader with access to all news sources could get an unbiased perspective generally speaking reader heterogeneity is more important for accuracy in media than competition per se

congressional decision making and the separation of powers to what extent does the separation of powers affect congressional roll call voting behavior to answer this question i offer a strategic model of congressional decision making that asserts members of congress pursue public policy goals when casting roll call votes from the equilibrium predictions of a formal model i generate testable hypotheses by computing the expected net amount of sophisticated nonsincere congressional behavior given changes in decision context i test the predictions of the theoretical model with data from all civil rights roll call votes from the 83d to the 102d congress the results demonstrate that both the other legislative chamber and the supreme court profoundly constrain house members and senators when casting roll call votes this is strong evidence of the importance of policy outcomes to members of congress when voting on the floor

how geographic distance and political ideology interact to influence public perception of unconventional oil natural gas development a growing area of research has addressed public perception of unconventional oil and natural gas development via hydraulic fracturing fracking we extend this research by examining how geographic proximity to such extraction interacts with political ideology to influence issue support regression analysis of data from a fall 2013 national telephone survey of united states residents reveals that as respondents geographic distance from areas experiencing significant development increases political ideology becomes more strongly associated with issue support with the liberal partisan divide widening our findings support construal level theory s central premise that people use more abstract considerations like political ideology the more geographically removed they are from an issue we discuss implications for studying public opinion of energy development as well as for risk communication

optimal environmental taxation in the presence of other taxes general equilibrium analyses this paper examines the optimal setting of environmental taxes in economies where other distortionary taxes are present we employ analytical and numerical models to explore the degree to which in a second best economy optimal environmental tax rates differ from the rates implied by the pigovian principle according to which the optimal tax rate equals the marginal environmental damages both models indicate contrary to what several analysts have suggested that the optimal tax rate on emissions of a given pollutant is generally less than the rate supported by the pigovian principle moreover the optimal rate is lower the larger are the distortions posed by ordinary taxes numerical results indicate that previous studies may have seriously overstated the size of the optimal carbon tax by disregarding pre existing taxes this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

an institutional theory of hydraulic fracturing policy the use of high volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing fracking has increased substantially over the past five years in the united states use of this drilling technology to extract natural gas from hitherto impermeable shale is expected to increase even more in coming decades two institutions integration contracts and well spacing requirements evolved to mitigate the common pool economic wastes associated with conventional oil and gas drilling u s regulators have applied these institutions to fracking however shale plays differ geologically from conventional plays and are subject to different extractive technologies we theorize that the point source pollution characteristics of conventional drilling allowed integration contracts and well space requirements to minimize local negative environmental externalities as an unintended byproduct of minimizing common pool economic wastes the non point source pollution characteristics of fracking however make these institutions insufficient to minimize negative environmental externalities associated with drilling in shale plays because the economic waste problem is different if policymakers understand the crucial differences between conventional oil and gas plays and shale plays and the drilling technologies applied to them they should be better equipped to craft fracking regulatory policies that internalize problematic externalities

economics of modern energy boomtowns do oil and gas shocks differ from shocks in the rest of the economy abstract the us shale boom has intensified interest in how the expanding oil and gas sector affects local economic performance research has produced mixed results and has not compared how energy shocks differ from equal sized shocks elsewhere in the economy what emerges is that the estimated impacts of energy development vary by region empirical methodology as well as the time horizon that is considered this paper captures these dimensions to present a more complete picture of energy boomtowns utilizing us county data we estimate the effects of changes in oil and gas extraction employment on total employment growth as well as growth by sector we compare this to the effects of equal sized shocks in the rest of the economy to assess whether energy booms are inherently different the analysis is performed separately for nonmetropolitan and metropolitan counties using instrumental variables we difference over 1 3 6 and 10 year time periods to account for county fixed effects and to assess responses across different time horizons the results show that in nonmetro counties energy sector multiplier effects on total county employment first increase up to 6 year horizons and then decline for 10 year horizons we also observe positive spillovers to the non traded goods sector while spillovers are small or negative for traded goods in metro counties there are no significant effects on total employment although positive spillovers are present in some sectors yet equal sized shocks in the rest of the economy produce more jobs on average than oil and gas shocks suggesting that policymakers should seek more diversified development

costs benefits and the malleability of public support for fracking abstract public opinion plays an important role in shaping the policy debate over hydraulic fracturing at both the state and national level however most americans report having little to no information about this controversial practice that has transformed the u s energy market employing an experiment embedded on a nationally representative survey we examine how citizens respond to arguments concerning the costs and benefits of fracking and incorporate them into their policy preferences arguments emphasizing the economic benefits of fracking bolster support for the technique however these gains are completely canceled if paired with a discussion of fracking s environmental costs additionally we find mixed evidence of partisan motivated reasoning in how this information is processed individuals whose partisan attachments and preexisting beliefs about global climate change conflict are particularly responsive to arguments about the benefits and costs of fracking our results have important implications for scholars and policymakers concerned with partisan polarization in public opinion toward energy and environmental policy

optimal tax and tariff policies with tax credits abstract this paper examines the optimal tax and tariff policies for a small open economy when mobile capital receives a tax credit for taxes paid to the host country for a capital importing country a tax on capital equal to the source country tax rate to capture tax revenue combined with a subsidy to encourage capital imports is the optimal policy results are also derived for cases in which only one of the instruments can be varied for a capital exporting country that cannot reduce its capital tax rate a subsidy to the sector using exported capital is desirable

the impact of fracking activities on oklahoma s housing prices a panel cointegration analysis abstract fracking drilling has opened a discussion on the role of technological developments in economies engaged in shale oil and gas formations oil and natural gas production opened new possibilities for employment benefits and housing prices decreases this paper explores for the first time the impact of fracking on housing prices across oklahoma s counties spanning the period 2000 2015 through panel methods the findings show a positive effect on housing prices while this positive effect gains statistical significance only over the period after the 2006 fracking boom the results survive a robustness check that explicitly considers distance and groundwater dependency issues

how disasters affect local labor markets the effects of hurricanes in florida this study improves upon the difference in difference approach by examining exogenous shocks using a generalized difference in difference gdd technique that identifies economic effects of hurricanes based on the quarterly census of employment and wages data worker earnings in florida counties hit by a hurricane increase up to 4 percent whereas earnings in neighboring counties decrease over time workers experience faster earnings and slower employment growth than workers in unaffected counties hurricanes have a greater impact in coastal and panhandle counties and powerful hurricanes have greater economic effects than weaker ones further the gdd technique is applicable to analyze a wider range of exogenous shocks than hurricanes

income and employment effects of shale gas extraction windfalls evidence from the marcellus region abstract new technologies combining hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling in oil and gas extraction are creating a sudden expansion of production residents of places where deep underground oil and gas deposits are found want to know about the broader economic social and environmental impacts of these activities that generate windfall income for some residents we first review the literature on windfall spending patterns then using the marcellus region the earliest area to be tapped using the new techniques we estimate county level employment and income effects for robustness we employ two methods using a propensity score matching approach we find no effect of fracking on income or employment a panel fixed effect regression approach suggests statistically significant employment effects in six out of seven alternative specifications but significant income effects in only one out of seven specifications in short the income spillover effects in the marcellus region appear to be minimal meaning there s little incentive at the county level to incur current or potential future costs that may be associated with this activity we conclude with some ideas on how localities might employ policies that would allow natural gas extraction to move forward benefitting landowners while establishing some financial safeguards for the broader community

psychological pressure in competitive environments evidence from a randomized natural experiment much like cognitive abilities emotional skills can have major eects on performance and economic outcomes this paper studies the behavior of professional subjects involved in a dynamic competition in their own natural environment the setting is a penalty shoot out in soccer where two teams compete in a tournament framework taking turns in a sequence of ve penalty kicks each as the kicking order is determined by the random outcome of a coin ip the treatment and control

bargaining with commitment choice of techniques and direct foreign investment abstract once a firm has installed a plant in a host country the country will have an incentive to reopen negotiations concerning tax rates this paper examines the incentives for the country to commit to not reopening negotiations a commitment deters the firm from inefficiently reducing the capital intensity of its investment but apparently surrenders tax revenues by not exploiting the country s post entry bargaining power we show that commitment will be optimal as long as the tax system does not place too distortionary a burden on capital and the country has access to capital markets

the regional economic impact of oil and gas extraction in texas abstract this paper empirically investigates the regional economic impact of oil and gas extraction in texas during the recent shale oil boom regressions with county level data over the period 2009 2014 support smaller multiplier effects on local employment and income than corresponding estimates drawn from popular input output based studies economic impacts were larger for extraction from gas wells than oil wells while the drilling phase generated comparable impacts estimates of economic impacts are greater in a dynamic spatial panel model that allows for spillover effects across local economies as well as over time

foreign direct investment under oligopoly profit shifting or profit capturing abstract in this paper a model of taxation of foreign source corporate income is developed when the output market is not perfectly competitive profit shifting policies similar to those in the new trade literature are also present in the case of foreign direct investment fdi there are however important differences to the new trade theory since in case of fdi i corporate taxation and double taxation relief are the policy instruments rather than output or revenue taxes ii countries are not symmetric in the sense that the host country has the first right to tax the multinational s profit and the home country reacts by providing double taxation relief and iii output but not corporate taxation is specific to imperfectly competitive industries it is argued that a variants of a tax credit are analogous to export subsidies b when the home country operates a tax credit system the host country s incentive to capture the multinational s profit is bounded under imperfect competition c when the host country offers a tax holiday the home country should imitate this policy and d in the presence of perfect competitive industries double taxation relief is a good instrument to target imperfectly competitive industries

geographic proximity to coal plants and u s public support for extending the production tax credit abstract the production tax credit ptc is an important policy instrument through which the federal government promotes renewable energy development in the united states however the efficacy of the ptc is hampered by repeated expirations and short term extensions and by the general uncertainty surrounding its future status we examine the factors driving variation in public support for the extension of the ptc using a nationally representative internet based survey americans living near a coal fired power plant are significantly more likely to support extending the ptc than are their peers who are more insulated from the externalities of burning coal the evidence for this dynamic was strongest and most statistically significant among subjects experimentally primed to think about the adverse health effects of burning coal raising awareness of the public health ramifications of generating electricity from fossil fuels holds the potential to increase support for renewable energy policies among those living in proximity to coal plants even in a highly politicized policy debate

the geopolitical impact of the shale revolution exploring consequences on energy prices and rentier states while the shale revolution was largely a us affair it affects the global energy system in this paper we look at the effects of this spectacular increase in natural gas and oil extraction capacity can have on the mix of primary energy sources on energy prices and through that on internal political stability of rentier states we use two exploratory simulation models to investigate the consequences of the combination of both complexity and uncertainty in relation to the global energy system and state stability our simulations show that shale developments could be seen as part of a long term hog cycle with a short term drop in oil prices if unconventional supply substitutes demand for oil these lower oil prices may lead to instability in rentier states neighbouring the eu especially when dependence on oil and gas income is high youth bulges are present or buffers like sovereign wealth funds are too limited to bridge the negative economic effects of temporary low oil prices

tax competition in imperfectly competitive markets abstract the literature on strategic trade policy has shown that in imperfectly competitive markets governments have an incentive to subsidize exports of their own firms yet the consequence of the departure from laissez faire is a wasteful subsidy race in contrast this paper shows that even in imperfectly competitive markets there is a strong tendency for laissez faire to prevail the driving force is the firms willingness to exploit tax or subsidy differentials by relocating production a small tax differential induces firms to change their place of production the change in market structure has a negligible effect on the oligopoly equilibrium but a non negligible impact on government revenues when tax policy is non discriminatory governments gain lose by attracting all firms when production is taxed subsidized hence laissez faire is the only equilibrium since from the point of view of the two producing countries laissez faire nondiscrimination pareto dominates the intervention equilibrium discrimination nondiscrimination is a simple device to result in a mutual beneficial outcome

oil abundance and income inequality the paper empirically investigates the impact of natural resource abundance in particular oil on income disparities it employs common correlated effects pooled mean group methodology for estimation to account for the cross country heterogeneity and cross section dependence in the oil inequality nexus in a sample of developed and developing countries we find that oil abundance as well as oil dependence reduce income inequality this inequality reducing effect is highly likely to operate from better education attainments and improved health status due to oil booms

cornucopia or curse reviewing the costs and benefits of shale gas hydraulic fracturing fracking this study assesses the overall technical economic environmental and social costs and benefits of the hydraulic fracturing fracking of natural gas drawn from a review of more than 100 studies looking at shale gas in the past 10 years most of them peer reviewed this article begins by briefly explaining the process of hydrofracking and summarizing recent market trends up until late 2013 then the study discusses a series of advantages and disadvantages to hydrofracking it notes that done properly shale gas development can enhance energy security and the availability of energy fuels lower natural gas prices offer a cleaner environmental footprint than some other fossil fuels and enable local economic development however done poorly production can be prone to accidents and leakage contribute to environmental degradation induce earthquakes and when externalities are accounted for produce more net economic losses than profits the study concludes that the pursuit and utilization of shale gas thus presents policymakers planners and investors with a series of pernicious tradeoffs and tough choices

the economic aftermath of resource booms evidence from boomtowns in the american west the current us oil and gas boom is injecting labour capital and revenue into communities near reserves will these communities be cursed with lower long run incomes in the wake of the boom we study the oil boom and bust cycle of the 1970s and 1980s to gain insights using annual data on drilling to identify western boom and bust counties we find substantial positive local employment and income effects during the boom in the aftermath of the bust however we find that incomes per capita decreased and unemployment compensation payments increased relative to what they would have been if the boom had not occurred