IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/bejeap/v11y2011i1n63.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Labor Market Effects of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

Author

Listed:
  • Hore John

    (Navigant Economics)

  • Carrington William J.

    (Congressional Budget Office)

Abstract

We study the labor market effects of the 1989 Exxon Valdez Oil Spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska, which was the largest U.S. oceanic oil spill prior to the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill. We find that employment and average earnings increased in 1989 when the cleanup effort was largest and there appears to have been little, if any, adverse effect on average labor market opportunities in later years. Increased wages elicited increased labor supply in the form of both in-migration of workers and increased weekly hours. While the labor market effects of the spill were largely beneficial, there is some evidence that the effects upon self-employed fishing boat owners in the region may have been more heterogeneous, with some owners signing lucrative cleanup contracts with Exxon and its agents while others did not. The existence of these positive labor effects does not address the significant environmental, psychological and social costs imposed on the region and on the communities whose livelihood and organization were affected by the spill.

Suggested Citation

  • Hore John & Carrington William J., 2011. "Labor Market Effects of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-18, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:bejeap:v:11:y:2011:i:1:n:63
    DOI: 10.2202/1935-1682.2707
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.2202/1935-1682.2707
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2202/1935-1682.2707?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carrington, William J, 1996. "The Alaskan Labor Market during the Pipeline Era," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(1), pages 186-218, February.
    2. Peter A. Diamond & Jerry A. Hausman, 1994. "Contingent Valuation: Is Some Number Better than No Number?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 45-64, Fall.
    3. Richard Carson & Robert Mitchell & Michael Hanemann & Raymond Kopp & Stanley Presser & Paul Ruud, 2003. "Contingent Valuation and Lost Passive Use: Damages from the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 25(3), pages 257-286, July.
    4. Ariel R. Belasen & Solomon W. Polachek, 2009. "How Disasters Affect Local Labor Markets: The Effects of Hurricanes in Florida," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 44(1).
    5. Maurie J. Cohen, 1995. "Technological Disasters and Natural Resource Damage Assessment: An Evaluation of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 71(1), pages 65-82.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Catherine L. Kling & Daniel J. Phaneuf & Jinhua Zhao, 2012. "From Exxon to BP: Has Some Number Become Better Than No Number?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 26(4), pages 3-26, Fall.
    2. Diane Dupont, 2003. "CVM Embedding Effects When There Are Active, Potentially Active and Passive Users of Environmental Goods," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 25(3), pages 319-341, July.
    3. Thomas Broberg, 2010. "Income Treatment Effects in Contingent Valuation: The Case of the Swedish Predator Policy," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 46(1), pages 1-17, May.
    4. Martina Kirchberger, 2014. "Natural Disasters and Labour Markets," Economics Series Working Papers WPS/2014-19, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    5. Ndebele, Tom & Forgie, Vicky, 2017. "Estimating the economic benefits of a wetland restoration programme in New Zealand: A contingent valuation approach," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 75-89.
    6. Bruno S. Frey & Simon Luechinger & Alois Stutzer, 2007. "Calculating Tragedy: Assessing The Costs Of Terrorism," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(1), pages 1-24, February.
    7. Helga Fehr-Duda & Robin Schimmelpfennig, 2018. "Wider die Zahlengläubigkeit: Sind Befragungsergebnisse eine gute Grundlage für wirtschaftspolitische Entscheidungen?," ECON - Working Papers 297, Department of Economics - University of Zurich, revised Dec 2018.
    8. Lehrer, David & Becker, Nir & Bar, Pua, 2010. "The economic impact of the invasion of Acacia saligna in Israel," MPRA Paper 33954, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Ana Faria Lopes & Gorm Kipperberg, 2020. "Diagnosing Insensitivity to Scope in Contingent Valuation," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 77(1), pages 191-216, September.
    10. Cook, David & Davíðsdóttir, Brynhildur & Kristófersson, Daði Már, 2016. "Energy projects in Iceland – Advancing the case for the use of economic valuation techniques to evaluate environmental impacts," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 104-113.
    11. Vincent G. Munley, 2018. "A Contingent Valuation Analysis of the Galway City Museum: Welfare Estimates for Attendance in the Absence of an Admission Fee," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 49(4), pages 489-514.
    12. Marchand, Joseph, 2012. "Local labor market impacts of energy boom-bust-boom in Western Canada," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 165-174.
    13. H. Spencer Banzhaf, 2017. "Constructing Markets: Environmental Economics and the Contingent Valuation Controversy," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 49(5), pages 213-239, Supplemen.
    14. Park, Dojin, 2021. "The Valuation of Soil Health Improvements and Ecosystem Services among Crop Producers in the U.S," 2021 Annual Meeting, August 1-3, Austin, Texas 314032, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    15. Whitehead, John C., 2016. "Plausible responsiveness to scope in contingent valuation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 17-22.
    16. Bruno S. Frey & Simon Luechinger, 2005. "Measuring terrorism," Chapters, in: Alain Marciano & Jean-Michel Josselin (ed.), Law and the State, chapter 6, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    17. Bruno S. Frey & Simon Luechinger & Alois Stutzer, "undated". "Valuing Public Goods: The Life Satisfaction Approach," IEW - Working Papers 184, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    18. Erik Brynjolfsson & Avinash Collis & Felix Eggers, 2019. "Using massive online choice experiments to measure changes in well-being," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 116(15), pages 7250-7255, April.
    19. Richard C. Bishop & Kevin J. Boyle, 2019. "Reliability and Validity in Nonmarket Valuation," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 72(2), pages 559-582, February.
    20. Nikita Lyssenko & Roberto Mart󹑺-Espiñeira, 2012. "Respondent uncertainty in contingent valuation: the case of whale conservation in Newfoundland and Labrador," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(15), pages 1911-1930, May.

    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:bpj:bejeap:v:11:y:2011:i:1:n:63. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 bibliographic 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.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyterbrill.com .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.