Shale gas development and regional economic growth: Evidence from Fuling, China

Yingdan Mei, Wenbo Liu, Jianliang Wang and Yongmei Bentley

Energy, 2022, vol. 239, issue PC

Abstract: Climate change, the imbalance between China's domestic energy supply and demand, and the success of the shale gas revolution in the United States have been the main motivators for China to actively issue shale gas development policies and explore its own path on this industry. This paper estimates three indicators of economic development: regional GDP, employment level, and the housing price index by using data from China's largest shale gas region, the Fuling District in Chongqing (a municipality in China). The analysis uses a Synthetic Control Method (SCM) model based on data from Fuling itself and other 34 counties of the Chongqing municipality over the period from 2005 to 2018. The results demonstrate that shale gas development has a significant positive effect on both regional GDP and employment level, with average impact growth rates respectively of 9.8% and 12.0%. By contrast, we find an insignificant effect of shale gas development on housing prices. These results support the case for further development of shale gas in China. Note that in some areas our results differ from existing literature, providing a reference for further research in this area.

Keywords: Shale gas development; Synthetic control method; Regional GDP; Employment; Housing price (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544221025020
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:239:y:2022:i:pc:s0360544221025020

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2021.122254

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().