Do Regulations to Protect Endangered Species on Private Lands Affect Local Employment? Evidence from the Listing of the Lesser Prairie Chicken

Richard Melstrom, Kangil Lee () and Jacob P. Byl

Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 2018, vol. 43, issue 3

Abstract: The U.S. Endangered Species Act is often criticized as “pitting people against wildlife" by conserving habitat at the cost of jobs, but relatively little is known about the labor market effects of listing a species under the Endangered Species Act. We examine changes in employment associated with the lesser prairie chicken, which was listed as threatened in May 2014. Using county-level employment data and variation in suitable prairie chicken habitat, we apply a difference-in-differences strategy to measure the employment effects of the listing decision. We find evidence that employment declined about 1.5% in affected counties. The effect is proportional to habitat, which means counties with relatively more habitat experienced a larger share of employment losses.

Keywords: Environmental Economics and Policy; Political Economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/276499/files/J ... lstrom%2C346-363.pdf (application/pdf)

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:ags:jlaare:276499

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.276499

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics from Western Agricultural Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().