The Impacts of Lower Natural Gas Prices on Jobs in the U.S. Manufacturing Sector

Wayne Gray, Joshua Linn, and Richard Morgenstern
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Joshua Linn and Wayne B. Gray

The Energy Journal, 2019, vol. Volume 40, issue Number 5

Abstract: The recovery of the U.S. manufacturing sector following the 2008-2009 economic recession coincided with a sharp drop in natural gas prices. To determine whether a causal connection in fact exists, we use confidential plant-level data for 1972-2012 to estimate the employment effects of changes in natural gas and other energy prices. Previous analyses have used aggregated data and failed to control for multiple drivers of employment dynamics, such as other input costs. We show that controlling for these factors substantially diminishes the effects of natural gas and electricity prices on manufacturing employment. Accounting for the direct effects of natural gas prices as well as the indirect effects via electricity prices, we estimate that the decline in natural gas prices between 2007 and 2012 raised overall manufacturing employment by 0.6 percent, and for gas-intensive industries, by 1.8 percent.

JEL-codes: F0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.iaee.org/en/publications/ejarticle.aspx?id=3406 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to IAEE members and subscribers.

Related works:
Journal Article: The Impacts of Lower Natural Gas Prices on Jobs in the U.S. Manufacturing Sector (2019)
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:aen:journl:ej40-5-linn

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.iaee.org/en/publications/ejsearch.aspx

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Energy Journal from International Association for Energy Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by David Williams ().