IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejpol/v7y2015i2p192-213.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does Agriculture Generate Local Economic Spillovers? Short-Run and Long-Run Evidence from the Ogallala Aquifer

Author

Listed:
  • Richard Hornbeck
  • Pinar Keskin

Abstract

Agriculture may support the local nonagricultural economy in rural areas, though agricultural expansion may also crowd-out nonagricultural activity. On the United States Plains, areas over the Ogallala aquifer experienced windfall agricultural gains when post WWII technologies increased farmers' access to groundwater. Comparing counties over the Ogallala with similar counties, nonagricultural sectors experienced only short-run relative benefits. Despite substantial and persistent agricultural gains, there was no long run relative expansion of nonagricultural sectors in Ogallala counties. Agricultural development may still encourage regional or national nonagricultural development, but agriculture does not appear to generate local economic spillovers that differentially encourage local nonagricultural activity. (JEL Q12, Q15, Q18, Q25, R11)

Suggested Citation

  • Richard Hornbeck & Pinar Keskin, 2015. "Does Agriculture Generate Local Economic Spillovers? Short-Run and Long-Run Evidence from the Ogallala Aquifer," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 7(2), pages 192-213, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejpol:v:7:y:2015:i:2:p:192-213
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/pol.20130077
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/pol.20130077
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/aej/pol/data/0702/2013-0077_data.zip
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/aej/pol/ds/0702/2013-0077_ds.zip
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard Hornbeck, 2012. "The Enduring Impact of the American Dust Bowl: Short- and Long-Run Adjustments to Environmental Catastrophe," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(4), pages 1477-1507, June.
    2. Fishback, Price V. & Horrace, William C. & Kantor, Shawn, 2005. "Did New Deal Grant Programs Stimulate Local Economies? A Study of Federal Grants and Retail Sales During the Great Depression," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 65(1), pages 36-71, March.
    3. Glenn Ellison & Edward L. Glaeser & William R. Kerr, 2010. "What Causes Industry Agglomeration? Evidence from Coagglomeration Patterns," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 1195-1213, June.
    4. Nathan Nunn & Nancy Qian, 2011. "The Potato's Contribution to Population and Urbanization: Evidence From A Historical Experiment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 126(2), pages 593-650.
    5. Richard Hornbeck, 2010. "Barbed Wire: Property Rights and Agricultural Development," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 125(2), pages 767-810.
    6. Michael Greenstone & Richard Hornbeck & Enrico Moretti, 2010. "Identifying Agglomeration Spillovers: Evidence from Winners and Losers of Large Plant Openings," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(3), pages 536-598, June.
    7. Roback, Jennifer, 1982. "Wages, Rents, and the Quality of Life," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(6), pages 1257-1278, December.
    8. Conley, T. G., 1999. "GMM estimation with cross sectional dependence," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 1-45, September.
    9. Vogel, Stephen J, 1994. "Structural Changes in Agriculture: Production Linkages and Agricultural Demand-Led Industrialization," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 46(1), pages 136-156, January.
    10. Thobani, Mateen, 1997. "Formal Water Markets: Why, When, and How to Introduce Tradable Water Rights," World Bank Research Observer, World Bank Group, vol. 12(2), pages 161-179, August.
    11. Richard Hornbeck & Pinar Keskin, 2011. "The Evolving Impact of the Ogallala Aquifer: Agricultural Adaptation to Groundwater and Climate," NBER Working Papers 17625, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Barrett E. Kirwan, 2009. "The Incidence of U.S. Agricultural Subsidies on Farmland Rental Rates," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(1), pages 138-164, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Stephen Lauer & Matthew Sanderson, 2020. "Irrigated agriculture and human development: a county-level analysis 1980–2010," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 22(5), pages 4407-4423, June.
    2. Timothy Komarek & Scott Loveridge, 2015. "Firm Sizes And Economic Development: Estimating Long-Term Effects On U.S. County Growth, 1990–2000," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(2), pages 262-279, March.
    3. Lewis, Joshua & Severnini, Edson, 2020. "Short- and long-run impacts of rural electrification: Evidence from the historical rollout of the U.S. power grid," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    4. Bragança, Arthur Amorim, 2018. "The Economic Consequences of the Agricultural Expansion in Matopiba," Revista Brasileira de Economia - RBE, EPGE Brazilian School of Economics and Finance - FGV EPGE (Brazil), vol. 72(2), June.
    5. Da Mata, Daniel & Resende, Guilherme, 2020. "Changing the climate for banking: The economic effects of credit in a climate-vulnerable area," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    6. Emerick, Kyle, 2018. "Agricultural productivity and the sectoral reallocation of labor in rural India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 488-503.
    7. Leight, Jessica, 2020. "Comment on “The effect of migration policy on growth, structural change, and regional inequality in China”, by Hao, Sun, Tombe and Zhu," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 135-137.
    8. Jonathan Colmer, 2018. "Weather, Labor Reallocation and Industrial Production: Evidence from India," CEP Discussion Papers dp1544, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    9. Santangelo, G., 2019. "Firms and Farms: The Local Effects of Farm Income on Firms’ Demand," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1924, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    10. Paula Bustos & Bruno Caprettini & Jacopo Ponticelli, 2016. "Agricultural Productivity and Structural Transformation: Evidence from Brazil," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(6), pages 1320-1365, June.
    11. Yuan Tian & Junjie Xia & Rudai Yang, 2020. "Trade-induced urbanization and the making of modern agriculture," Discussion Papers 2020-16, University of Nottingham, GEP.
    12. Alain de JANVRY & Elisabeth SADOULET & Manzoor DAR & Kyle EMERICK, 2016. "The Agricultural Technology Adoption Puzzle: What Can We Learn From Field Experiments?," Working Papers P178, FERDI.
    13. Severnini, Edson R., 2014. "The Power of Hydroelectric Dams: Agglomeration Spillovers," IZA Discussion Papers 8082, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Ray D. Bollman & Shon M. Ferguson, 2019. "The Local Impacts of Agricultural Subsidies: Evidence from the Canadian Prairies," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 70(2), pages 507-528, June.
    15. Carillo, Mario Francesco, 2018. "Agricultural policy and long-run development: evidence from Mussolini's Battle for Grain," MPRA Paper 88941, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Ram Fishman & Meha Jain & Avinash Kishore, 2013. "Patterns of Migration, Water Scarcity and Caste in Rural Northern Gujarat," Working Papers id:5400, eSocialSciences.
    17. Ryan Edwards, 2015. "Is plantation agriculture good for the poor? Evidence from Indonesia's palm oil expansion," Departmental Working Papers 2015-12, The Australian National University, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics.
    18. McGowan, Danny & Vasilakis, Chrysovalantis, 2019. "Reap what you sow: Agricultural technology, urbanization and structural change," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(9), pages 1-1.
    19. Samuel Marden, 2016. "The agricultural roots of industrial development: ‘forward linkages’ in reform era China," Working Paper Series 09116, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    20. Drysdale, Krystal M. & Hendricks, Nathan P., 2018. "Adaptation to an irrigation water restriction imposed through local governance," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 150-165.
    21. Loughrey, Jason & O’Donoghue, Cathal & Meredith, David & Murphy, Ger & Shanahan, Ultan & Miller, Corina, 2018. "The Local Impact of Cattle Farming," 166th Seminar, August 30-31, 2018, Galway, West of Ireland 276231, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    22. Martin Fiszbein, 2017. "Agricultural Diversity, Structural Change and Long-run Development: Evidence from the U.S," NBER Working Papers 23183, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    23. Colmer, Jonathan, 2018. "Weather, labor reallocation and industrial production: evidence from India," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 88695, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    24. Arthur Grimes & Sean Hyland, 2013. "Passing the Buck: Impacts of Commodity Price Shocks on Local Outcomes," Working Papers 13_10, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    25. Manning, Dale T. & Rad, Mani Rouhi & Suter, Jordan F. & Goemans, Christopher & Xiang, Zaichen & Bailey, Ryan, 2020. "Non-market valuation in integrated assessment modeling: The benefits of water right retirement," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • Q12 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Micro Analysis of Farm Firms, Farm Households, and Farm Input Markets
    • Q15 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Land Ownership and Tenure; Land Reform; Land Use; Irrigation; Agriculture and Environment
    • Q18 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Agricultural Policy; Food Policy
    • Q25 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Water
    • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aejpol:v:7:y:2015:i:2:p:192-213. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Michael P. Albert). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.