The Antiquities Act, national monuments, and the regional economy

Abstract

Large, landscape-scale national monuments have long been controversial. It has been claimed that large monuments harm local economies by restricting growth of the grazing, timber, mining, and energy industries. Others have asserted that large monuments aid economic growth by reducing reliance on volatile commodity markets and fostering tourism growth. In this study, we use a synthetic control approach to measure the average causal effect of nine national monument designations on county-level per capita income. We find no evidence that monument designation affected per capita income in any of 20 counties hosting nine large (>50,000 acres) national monuments established under the Antiquities Act (six monuments) or by legislative action (three monuments). The broad economic claims of both advocates and critics of large national monuments have little empirical support. The absence of a designation effect for large national monuments is likely due to the attributes of federal land and the legal constraints under which it is managed.

Amenity Migration and Public Lands: Rise of the Protected Areas

“…Given the data limitations for annual reporting and the need to compare a dynamic dependent variable to static independent variables, we chose to use data from the latter parts and after the study period. While we did not investigate the change in net migration rates before and after designations, we do see this as a future research need as Jakus and Akhundjanov (2019) have done with National Monuments and per capita income. Likewise, greater spatial resolution, such as examining migration at the census area level, as done by Winkler et al (2007), would be beneficial and may highlight more nuanced differences among protected area types.…”

Impact of Industrial Agglomeration on Regional Economy in a Simulated Intelligent Environment Based on Machine Learning

“…The regional industrial spatial agglomeration index is developed on the basis of the industrial concentration index, and is used to calculate the production volume of many major industries in the region as the percentages of the national industries [26]. The highest percentage indicates that the largest local industry has a competitive advantage in the country.…”

State‐level austerity, education, and large urban labor markets: Evidence from fiscal policy experiments in Kansas and Wisconsin

“…To accomplish this, I use an assortment of labor market, demographic and industrial structure variables that could influence each labor market trajectory. The additional data to model the underlying labor market come from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Census and have been used in the previous synthetic control literature to model regional economic development outcomes (Jakus & Akhundjanov, ).…”

“…In practice, I use the labor market and demographic variables described in Section 3 and displayed in Table to match the secular trend in each treated CZ with the control CZs prior to 2011. I use a wide range of predictor variables that are often thought to influence underlying labor market fundamentals and have been used in the previous synthetic control literature (e.g., Jakus & Akhundjanov, ). Furthermore, I include total federal transfers to individuals in each CZ, which along with the labor market indices help control for government aid during the Great Recession.…”