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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 ...
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 ...
Journal Article
The response of employment to changes in oil and gas exploration and drilling
Oil prices declined significantly during the summer of 2014, leading to a subsequent decline in energy exploration and drilling. By the end of April 2015, rig counts were down 49 percent. In the past, these declines have disproportionately affected the economies of oil- and gas-producing states, decreasing statewide employment and inducing ?regional recessions.?