Economics Commons^™

An Economic Analysis Of Appalachian Power Industry Ecosystems County-Level Pie Supply Chain Analysis, Randall Jackson, Péter Járosi

Power Industry Ecosystem

This report describes an effort to provide for the Appalachian Region a clearer picture of the implications for the Power Industry Ecosystem (PIE) of power generating technology transitions and the geographical variations in PIE impacts. We develop and implement three measures that reveal meaningful characteristics of the PIE at the county level in terms of industry and place-based PIE dependence, changes in PIE-dependent employment, and susceptibility to impacts from a continued energy sector transition. We then use these three measures—Dependence, Impact, and Risk—to form a typology that we apply to identify and focus on counties in three identifiable categories: Hardship …

Economic Structure In Appalachia’S Urban Regions: Clustering And Diversification Strategies, Randall W. Jackson, Peter Jarosi, Gi-Eu Lee, Sara Farhangdoost

Cluster Analyses

In support of economic development practitioners’ efforts to devise strategies that can align with both industrial clustering and industrial diversification, this report provides a wide range of relevant measures and metrics. In addition to standard regional analysis tools like coefficients of specialization, location quotients, and growth rates, we introduce two fundamentally new measures for understanding the nature of regional clusters. These measures focus on the industries that anchor the clusters and characterize their strength and regional dominance. The former measures the share of the anchor industry’s direct and indirect requirements that could be satisfied by regional industries, and the latter …

A Varying Coefficient Model With Two-Way Fixed Effects And Different Smoothing Variables, Taining Wang, Feng Yao

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

We propose a varying coefficient regression model for panel data that controls for both latent heterogeneities in cross-sectional units and unobserved common shocks over time. The model allows different smoothing variables to enter through either a stand-alone function or a coefficient function. Without requiring a normalization of the fixed effects, we propose a two-step estimator. First, we estimate the varying coefficients with the pilot series-based estimators, eliminating fixed effects though differencing. Second, we perform a one-step kernel backfitting to improve the estimation efficiency. We demonstrate through Monte-Carlo simulations that our estimators are computationally efficient and perform well relative to a …

Three Essays In Applied Urban Economics, Alexander Cardazzi

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The first chapter examines the effect of policing strategies on housing prices. Crime has been shown to negatively affect housing values. However, there is not much empirical evidence documenting the amenity value of how people are policed. Stop & Frisk was a particularly salient policing tactic employed in New York City until a judge ruled it to be unconstitutional. This chapter uses exogenous variation in Stop & Frisk behavior resulting from landmark events in a federal class action lawsuit as well as exposure to Operation Impact, a high intensity policing strategy, to explain variation in property sales. Results indicate a …

Innovations In Money And Banking Markets, Eduardo Guimaraes Minuci

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The U.S. banking industry has experienced several technological and banking regulatory changes in the past two decades. This dissertation is composed of three papers that review and investigate how these banking and technological innovations have impacted depositors, bank provision of monetary assets, and bank performance. The order in which the papers are presented follows the order in which they were produced as the production of one paper helped spark ideas that led to the next.

Motivated by the fact that money has become more heterogeneous in terms of its returns, Chapter 1 focus on innovations in money markets by focusing …

Three Essays On “Energy , Environment, And Developmental Economics”, Bolarinwa Ajanaku

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation examines topics related to renewable energy development and investment planning, energy markets, environment degradation and economic development. The substantial ecological costs of deforestation are well known and considered globally important due to biodiversity loss, land degradation, soil erosion, and contributions to climate change. The first essay focuses upon understanding the tradeoff between development and deforestation in Africa. In the second essay, spatial analysis and Geographic Information System (GIS) are applied to determine potential locations for wind farms development in the state of West Virginia. Lastly, the third essay examines the role of wind power penetration on wholesale electricity …

Property Rights, Consequences Of Electrical Blackouts, And Measures Of Institutional Quality, Kerianne Nicole Lawson

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation is comprised of three essays. Chapter 1 is about a house titling program, called Khaya Lam, in South Africa. Despite it being legal in South Africa to acquire a title deed to a government-issued home, roughly 20 million South Africans do not hold title to their property. Millions of homes are eligible to have ownership transferred from the government to the individuals living in them, but legal costs and lack of awareness keep these renters from going through the steps to secure title deeds. Though they may occupy the property for years, without a title deed South Africans …

Non-Monetary Economies: A Study On Different Governing Principles, Richard Perry Vest Ii

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This thesis examines a new economic system with a focus on non-monetary (primarily automation) aspects. Currency has been used in exchange for goods and services and this exchange has often resulted in benefits gained by any given individual. What if that wasn’t the case? How might society function if it was not influenced by currency? This thesis explores this hypothetical concept of an economy without currency with a focus given to automation. Using utility and production functions, discussion is given on how supply and demand functions behave in a non-monetary economy, how governing policy could be handled, and how society …

Three Essays In Applied Econometrics: Agricultural And Energy Economics, Kuan-Ming Huang

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation examines three empirical issues in energy and agricultural economics using econometrics models whose titles are: 1) Do Natural Hazards in the Gulf Coast Still Matter for State-Level Natural Gas Prices in the US? Evidence After the Shale Gas Boom; 2) Do Exploitations of Marcellus and Utica Shale Formations Improve Regional Economy in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia? A Synthetic Control Analysis; and 3) How Did Covid-19 Impact US Household Food Spending? An Analysis Six Months In.

The first essay assesses the impact of natural hazards on state-level natural gas prices and evaluates the effects of the shale gas …

Causal Determinants Of College Success, Benjamin Blemings

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The first essay focuses on alcohol access in college, which is an impediment to many students' success. Alcohol sales to general seating at college football games has been broadly adopted despite results suggesting greater alcohol availability increases crime and college alcohol abuse. Using differences-in-differences, this paper estimates how allowing alcohol sales in college football general seating sections affects crime. Reductions in crime are found after sales are allowed. After sales begin, those under the age of 21 are still not legally permitted to purchase in-stadium alcohol, but are still affected by changes in other stadium policies or law enforcement strategies. …

The Road Less Traveled: Economic Analysis Of Roads And Highways, Margaret C. Bock

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Roads are an integral component of civilization, connecting people, markets, and ideas. In different settings and geographies, roads can take on many different purposes. In rural, more isolated areas, roads can serve as a cost-saving benefit and can be used as tools to increase accessibility. In urban, more congested areas, roads can be seen as an externality-producing hindrance. Naturally, given this view, the overall analysis of roads should reflect these different settings. To date, however, the study of roads in the economics literature has surprisingly large pitfalls, notably in terms of topics of study and methodologies used.

Spending on roads …

Credit Cards, Credit Utilization, And Consumption, Scott Fulford, Scott Schuh

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

Credit bureau data show remarkably stable consumer utilization of unsecured debt over the business cycle, life cycle, and individually quarter-to-quarter, despite massive variation in available credit. To explain these new findings, we propose a life-cycle consumption model with heterogeneous preferences, endogenous payment choice, and the option to revolve debt for consumption smoothing. Using diary data to identify payment use, the estimated model matches consumption and credit use at every frequency and suggests that around half the population has an endogenously high marginal propensity to consume. The results suggest understanding credit availability and heterogeneous use may lead to richer counter-cyclical policies.

Revolving Versus Convenience Use Of Credit Cards: Evidence From U.S. Credit Bureau Data, Scott Fulford, Scott Schuh

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

Credit card payments and revolving debt are important for consumer theory but a key data source — credit bureau records — does not distinguish between current charges and revolving debt from the previous month. We develop a theory-based econometric methodology informed by survey evidence to estimate the likelihood a consumer is revolving each quarter. We validate our approach using a new survey linked to credit bureau data. For likely revolvers: (1) 100 percent of an increase in credit becomes an increase in debt eventually; (2) credit limit changes are half as salient as debt changes; and (3) revolving status is …

The Eastern Panhandle Economic Outlook: 2021-2025, Brian Lego, John Deskins

Bureau of Business & Economic Research

West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle (EPH) has ranked as the state’s strongest economic region for a decade, with employment and other major indicators pointing to underlying strength in the EPH economy compared to West Virginia. The COVID-19 pandemic has hurt the EPH’s economy and will weigh on growth over the next few months, but the area should snap back by late-2021. In this report, we present a detailed discussion of the current state of the EPH economy along with our forecast for the likely path of economic activity over the next five years.

Identifying Industrial Clusters For Targeted Economic Development In West Virginia, Eric Bowen, John Deskins

Bureau of Business & Economic Research

In this report, we identify the industry clusters that are present in West Virginia’s metropolitan regions and provide tools to assess the most promising clusters for economic development targeting. This type of cluster analysis has become an important way for regions to understand their local economic structure and more effectively develop strategies to promote economic growth.

North Central West Virginia Economic Outlook 2021-2025, Brian Lego, John Deskins

Bureau of Business & Economic Research

North Central West Virginia has been one of the state’s strongest and steadiest economic regions for the past decade or so. The four-county area did lose some jobs during 2019, but those losses were tied to court-ordered delays of pipeline construction projects and layoffs at a large manufacturer rather than a deterioration in the area’s underlying economic fundamentals. Despite the region’s solid economic foundation, the COVID-19 pandemic did strike a major blow to the region’s economy in early-2020 and continues to affect the area to this day. In this report, we present a detailed discussion of North Central West Virginia’s …

Commodities Are Not Industries! A Value Chain Example, Randall W. Jackson, Patricio Aroca

Regional Research Institute Working Papers

Leontief and Stone both received Nobel Prizes in Economics for development and extension of input-output (IO) analysis, a framework that has gained little traction in mainstream U.S. economics. Although IO modeling has gained renewed focus in several problem domains, many contemporary economists eschew Stone's enhancements, resulting in inconsistent analytics, even in top economics journals. In this paper, we use an increasingly common approach to value chain analysis as one example that demonstrates such conceptual misunderstandings and by presenting properly formulated alternatives, we demonstrate the extent of the consequences of neglecting the Stone enhancements and important role of reproducing results.

Extending The Macroeconomic Impacts Forecasting Capabilities Of The National Energy Modeling System, Christa D. Court, Randall W. Jackson, Justin Adder, Gavin Pickenpaugh, Charles Zelek, Amanda J. Harker Steele

Regional Research Institute Working Papers

To comprehensively model the macroeconomic impacts that result from changes in long-term energy-economy forecasts, the United States Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) partnered with West Virginia University’s (WVU) Regional Research Institute to develop the NETL/WVU econometric input-output (ECIO) model. The NETL/WVU ECIO model is an impacts forecasting model that functions as an extension of the U.S. energy-economic models available from the United States (U.S.) Energy Information Administration’s National Energy Modeling System (NEMS) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Market Allocation (MARKAL) model. The ECIO model integrates a macroeconomic econometric forecasting model and an input-output accounting framework along …

Wheeling Area Economic Outlook: 2021-2025, Brian Lego, John Deskins

Bureau of Business & Economic Research

The Wheeling Area economy has seen large swings in economic activity over the past several years. Surging energy production and massive increases in pipeline construction activity fueled strong economic growth during 2017 and 2018. By contrast, the completion of pipeline projects and two large hospital closures weighed on area payrolls in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic dealt the regional economy a major blow in early-2020. In this report, we present a detailed discussion of the Wheeling Area economy along with our forecast for regional economic conditions for the next five years.

Consistent Regional Commodity-By-Industry Input-Output Accounts, Randall Jackson, Péter Járosi

Regional Research Institute Working Papers

A long-standing regional science problem domain focuses on the identification of structural economic change. One of several approaches relies on the use of historical final demand series and a comparison of observed industry output to an estimate of what output would have been were economic structure static. However, these methods were first developed before the introduction of today’s commonly used commodity-by-industry (CxI)input-output (IO) accounting frameworks, and before the application of these methods to regional economies. Correctly formulating the supporting accounting structures for these analyses is essential, but can be challenging even for experienced an- alysts. Related textbook and journal articles …

Enhancing Our Understanding Of A Regional Economy: The Complementarity Of Cge And Eio Models, Andrew Crawley, Geoffrey J.D. Hewings

Regional Research Institute Working Papers

Economic impact models are powerful tools for the assessment of policy changes in regional economies. Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models have grown in popularity, becoming the dominant choice of practitioners and academics in this field. This popularity has been at the expense of an older class of model, the Econometric Input Output (EIO). The present paper demonstrates how both models, using the same input data, may yield different outcomes. However, the paper suggests that EIO has been underutilized even though it provides a strong complementary tool accompany that enhance analyses using a CGE approach. This paper urges regional economists to …

Interstate Protectionism: The Case Of Solar Renewable Energy Credits, Jed J. Cohen, Levan Elbakidze, Randall Jackson

The Nature Conservancy

Solar Renewable Energy Credits (SRECs) are financial instruments created by state policies to offer incentives for generating solar energy. In an effort to support in-state solar energy sectors and boost local employment opportunities, some states have closed off their SREC markets to out-of-state solar facilities. We examine the merits of such protectionist policy from the protectionist states perspective. We find that SREC market closure leads to higher in-state SREC prices, greater solar installation, and lower electricity prices. The study illustrates the economic incentives for protecting in-state SREC markets from out-of-state solar energy producers.

Shift-Share Analysis: South Carolina, 2005 - 2018, Randall Jackson, Péter Járosi

Shift Share Analyses

In County-level CIE Supply Chain Analysis, the second of five parts of An Economic Analysis of the Appalachian Coal Industry Ecosystem posted to the Commission’s website in January of 2018, we developed a set of metrics that were used to provide insights on the past and future supply chain implications of long-term coal industry decline in Appalachia.[1] These metrics were used to identify counties that have been heavily impacted by the decline of the coal industry, those that remain dependent on the coal industry ecosystem (CIE), and among the dependent counties, those that are at greatest risk of further impact. …

Shift-Share Analysis: Virginia, 2005 - 2018, Randall Jackson, Péter Járosi

Shift Share Analyses

In County-level CIE Supply Chain Analysis, the second of five parts of n Economic Analysis of the Appalachian Coal Industry Ecosystem posted to the Commission’s website in January of 2018, we developed a set of metrics that were used to provide insights on the past and future supply chain implications of long-term coal industry decline in Appalachia.[1] These metrics were used to identify counties that have been heavily impacted by the decline of the coal industry, those that remain dependent on the coal industry ecosystem (CIE), and among the dependent counties, those that are at greatest risk of further impact. …

Shift-Share Analysis: Ohio, 2005 - 2018, Randall Jackson, Péter Járosi

Shift Share Analyses

In County-level CIE Supply Chain Analysis, the second of five parts of An Economic Analysis of the Appalachian Coal Industry Ecosystem posted to the Commission’s website in January of 2018, we developed a set of metrics that were used to provide insights on the past and future supply chain implications of long-term coal industry decline in Appalachia.[1] These metrics were used to identify counties that have been heavily impacted by the decline of the coal industry, those that remain dependent on the coal industry ecosystem (CIE), and among the dependent counties, those that are at greatest risk of further impact. …

Shift-Share Analysis: Tennessee, 2005 - 2018, Randall Jackson, Péter Járosi

Shift Share Analyses

In County-level CIE Supply Chain Analysis, the second of five parts o f An Economic Analysis of the Appalachian Coal Industry Ecosystem posted to the Commission’s website in January of 2018, we developed a set of metrics that were used to provide insights on the past and future supply chain implications of long-term coal industry decline in Appalachia.[1] These metrics were used to identify counties that have been heavily impacted by the decline of the coal industry, those that remain dependent on the coal industry ecosystem (CIE), and among the dependent counties, those that are at greatest risk of further …

Shift-Share Analysis: West Virginia, 2005 - 2018, Randall Jackson, Péter Járosi

Shift Share Analyses

In County-level CIE Supply Chain Analysis, the second of five parts of An Economic Analysis of the Appalachian Coal Industry Ecosystem posted to the Commission’s website in January of 2018, we developed a set of metrics that were used to provide insights on the past and future supply chain implications of long-term coal industry decline in Appalachia.[1] These metrics were used to identify counties that have been heavily impacted by the decline of the coal industry, those that remain dependent on the coal industry ecosystem (CIE), and among the dependent counties, those that are at greatest risk of further impact. …

Shift-Share Analysis: Alabama, 2005 - 2018, Randall Jackson, Peter Jarosi

Shift Share Analyses

In County-level CIE Supply Chain Analysis, the second of five parts of An Economic Analysis of the Appalachian Coal Industry Ecosystem posted to the Commission’s website in January of 2018, we developed a set of metrics that were used to provide insights on the past and future supply chain implications of long-term coal industry decline in Appalachia.[1] These metrics were used to identify counties that have been heavily impacted by the decline of the coal industry, those that remain dependent on the coal industry ecosystem (CIE), and among the dependent counties, those that are at greatest risk of further impact. …

Shift-Share Analysis: Pennsylvania, 2005 - 2018, Randall Jackson, Péter Járosi

Shift Share Analyses

In County-level CIE Supply Chain Analysis, the second of five parts of An Economic Analysis of the Appalachian Coal Industry Ecosystem posted to the Commission’s website in January of 2018, we developed a set of metrics that were used to provide insights on the past and future supply chain implications of long-term coal industry decline in Appalachia.[1] These metrics were used to identify counties that have been heavily impacted by the decline of the coal industry, those that remain dependent on the coal industry ecosystem (CIE), and among the dependent counties, those that are at greatest risk of further impact. …

Shift-Share Analysis: North Carolina, 2005 - 2018, Randall Jackson, Péter Járosi

Shift Share Analyses

In County-level CIE Supply Chain Analysis, the second of five parts of An Economic Analysis of the Appalachian Coal Industry Ecosystem posted to the Commission’s website in January of 2018, we developed a set of metrics that were used to provide insights on the past and future supply chain implications of long-term coal industry decline in Appalachia.[1] These metrics were used to identify counties that have been heavily impacted by the decline of the coal industry, those that remain dependent on the coal industry ecosystem (CIE), and among the dependent counties, those that are at greatest risk of further impact. …