IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejpol/v11y2019i1p380-405.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Patchwork Policies, Spillovers, and the Search for Oil and Gas

Author

Listed:
  • Eric Lewis

Abstract

The United States has a complex patchwork of mineral ownership, where rights to oil and gas may be owned by the federal government, state governments, or private agents. I show why the policies imposed by one owner have theoretically ambiguous spillover effects on the drilling and production outcomes of neighboring plots of land. Exploiting a natural experiment in Wyoming with exogenous ownership assignment, I find significant spillovers: federal land close to state land has a lower probability of drilling than federal land far from state land.

Suggested Citation

  • Eric Lewis, 2019. "Patchwork Policies, Spillovers, and the Search for Oil and Gas," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 380-405, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejpol:v:11:y:2019:i:1:p:380-405
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/pol.20160373
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pol.20160373
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/content/file?id=8887
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/content/file?id=8911
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=Vbg-GL9c0XqSB1tEruDXgPBlYd5AK8qh
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. MacKinnon, James G & Magee, Lonnie, 1990. "Transforming the Dependent Variable in Regression Models," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 31(2), pages 315-339, May.
    2. Libecap, Gary D & Wiggins, Steven N, 1984. "Contractual Responses to the Common Pool: Prorationing of Crude Oil Production," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(1), pages 87-98, March.
    3. James W. McKie, 1960. "Market Structure and Uncertainty in Oil and Gas Exploration," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 74(4), pages 543-571.
    4. Mitch Kunce & Shelby Gerking & William Morgan, 2002. "Effects of Environmental and Land Use Regulation in the Oil and Gas Industry Using the Wyoming Checkerboard as an Experimental Design," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1588-1593, December.
    5. Ryan Kellogg, 2014. "The Effect of Uncertainty on Investment: Evidence from Texas Oil Drilling," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(6), pages 1698-1734, June.
    6. Conley, T. G., 1999. "GMM estimation with cross sectional dependence," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 1-45, September.
    7. Hendricks, Kenneth & Porter, Robert H & Tan, Guofo, 1993. "Optimal Selling Strategies for Oil and Gas Leases with an Informed Buyer," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(2), pages 234-239, May.
    8. Timothy Fitzgerald, 2010. "Evaluating Split Estates in Oil and Gas Leasing," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 86(2), pages 294-312.
    9. Shelby Gerking & William E. Morgan, 2007. "Effects of Environmental and Land Use Regulation in the Oil and Gas Industry Using the Wyoming Checkerboard as a Natural Experiment: Retraction," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 1032-1032, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Paul A. Brehm & Eric Lewis, 2021. "Information asymmetry, trade, and drilling: evidence from an oil lease lottery," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 52(3), pages 496-514, September.
    2. Liu, Yazhou & Cheng, Yunqian & Li, Tianshu & Ni, Jinlan & Norman, Stephen, 2024. "Information disclosure and public participation in environmental management: Evidence from the river chief system in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Paul A. Brehm & Eric Lewis, 2021. "Information asymmetry, trade, and drilling: evidence from an oil lease lottery," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 52(3), pages 496-514, September.
    2. Fitzgerald Timothy, 2012. "Natural Resource Production under Divided Ownership: Evidence from Coalbed Methane," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 8(3), pages 719-757, December.
    3. Brown, Jason P. & Fitzgerald, Timothy & Weber, Jeremy G., 2016. "Capturing rents from natural resource abundance: Private royalties from U.S. onshore oil & gas production," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 23-38.
    4. Karen Maguire, 2013. "Drill Baby Drill? Political and Market Influences on Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing in the Western United States," Economics Working Paper Series 1401, Oklahoma State University, Department of Economics and Legal Studies in Business, revised Apr 2013.
    5. Evan M. Herrnstadt & Ryan Kellogg & Eric Lewis, 2020. "The Economics of Time-Limited Development Options: The Case of Oil and Gas Leases," Working Papers 2020-66, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.
    6. Berman, Nicolas & Couttenier, Mathieu & Leblois, Antoine & Soubeyran, Raphael, 2023. "Crop prices and deforestation in the tropics," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    7. Richard G. Newell & Brian C. Prest & Ashley Vissing, 2016. "Trophy Hunting vs. Manufacturing Energy: The Price-Responsiveness of Shale Gas," NBER Working Papers 22532, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Muehlenbachs, Lucija, 2012. "Testing for Avoidance of Environmental Obligations," RFF Working Paper Series dp-12-12, Resources for the Future.
    9. Garret Christensen & Edward Miguel, 2018. "Transparency, Reproducibility, and the Credibility of Economics Research," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(3), pages 920-980, September.
    10. Lucija Muehlenbachs, 2015. "A Dynamic Model Of Cleanup: Estimating Sunk Costs In Oil And Gas Production," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 56(1), pages 155-185, February.
    11. Hernandez-Cortes, Danae & Meng, Kyle C., 2023. "Do environmental markets cause environmental injustice? Evidence from California’s carbon market," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 217(C).
    12. Rozo, Sandra V. & Sviatschi, Micaela, 2021. "Is a refugee crisis a housing crisis? Only if housing supply is unresponsive," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    13. Gonzalez, Felipe & Prem, Mounu & von Dessauer, Cristine, 2023. "Empowerment or Indoctrination? Women Centers Under Dictatorship," SocArXiv 64mf9, Center for Open Science.
    14. Aksoy, Cevat Giray & Poutvaara, Panu & Schikora, Felicitas, 2023. "First time around: Local conditions and multi-dimensional integration of refugees," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    15. LoPiccalo, Katherine, 2022. "Impact of broadband penetration on U.S. Farm productivity: A panel approach," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(9).
    16. Tommaso Colussi & Ingo E. Isphording & Nico Pestel, 2021. "Minority Salience and Political Extremism," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(3), pages 237-271, July.
    17. Guy Michaels, 2011. "The Long Term Consequences of Resource‐Based Specialisation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(551), pages 31-57, March.
    18. Alfred Garloff & Carsten Pohl & Norbert Schanne, 2013. "Do small labor market entry cohorts reduce unemployment?," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 29(15), pages 379-406.
    19. Luis R. Martinez & Jonas Jessen & Guo Xu, 2023. "A Glimpse of Freedom: Allied Occupation and Political Resistance in East Germany," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(1), pages 68-106, January.
    20. Bahar, Dany & Choudhury, Prithwiraj & Rapoport, Hillel, 2020. "Migrant inventors and the technological advantage of nations," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(9).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H82 - Public Economics - - Miscellaneous Issues - - - Governmental Property
    • L71 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Primary Products and Construction - - - Mining, Extraction, and Refining: Hydrocarbon Fuels
    • P14 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Property Rights
    • Q35 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation - - - Hydrocarbon Resources
    • Q38 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation - - - Government Policy (includes OPEC Policy)

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aejpol:v:11:y:2019:i:1:p:380-405. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.