Whither the American west economy? Natural amenities, mineral resources and nonmetropolitan county growth
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Whither the American west economy? Natural amenities, mineral resources and nonmetropolitan county growth Dan S. Rickman1 · Hongbo Wang2 Received: 3 November 2018 / Accepted: 1 May 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Although the American West has long experienced strong economic growth, variation in natural amenities and mineral resources across the West has produced a diversity of economic outcomes and trends. In this paper, we assess whether there have been recent significant shifts in economic growth across the nonmetropolitan counties of the region. We find significant relative downward growth shifts in areas most abundant in natural amenities. Further analysis suggests the downward growth shifts in high-amenity counties resulted from the capitalization of the amenities into housing costs, not from diminished quality of life in the counties from growth or climate change. Both the shocks and multipliers associated with mineral resource extraction shifted across the periods. The uncertainty surrounding future climate change adjustments and volatility of mineral resource extraction suggests the need for place-based policy to maintain economic vitality in the rural West. JEL Classification R11 · R23 · Q54
1 Introduction With its open spaces, mountains and frontier history the American West has long fascinated both the general public and academics alike. Adding to the interest with the region has been the dramatic shift in economic growth in the nation from the East to the West over the last hundred years (Nash 2018). The economy of the frontier American West is varied, including farms and ranches, oil, gas and other mineral resource extraction (Felix and Chapman 2017), manufacturing activity, and activity
* Dan S. Rickman [email protected] Hongbo Wang [email protected] 1
Oklahoma State University, 256 Business College, Stillwater, OK 74078, USA
2
Oklahoma State University, 272F Business College, Stillwater, OK 74078, USA
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D. S. Rickman, H. Wang
associated with the natural amenity attractiveness of the region (McGranahan and Beale 2002). This paper examines the rural American West economy in assessing whether there have been recent shifts in economic growth patterns in the nonmetropolitan counties of the eleven contiguous western states.1 The primary focus of the analysis is the potentially changing economic growth role of natural amenities and the shifts in growth associated with mineral resource extraction. Natural amenities have long been associated with strong population and employment growth in the United States (Graves 1980; McGranahan 1999; Deller et al. 2001; Rappaport 2007; Rickman and Rickman 2011). Strong population growth also has been noted in retirement (Green 2001; Adamy and Overberg 2018) and recreation-based counties (Beale and Johnson 1998). But the majority of counties classified as retirement destinations or recreation-based by the Economic Research Service (ERS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture also
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