Did the U.S. Fracking Boom Shale-Shock Regional Patenting?
Date
2024-09-17
Authors
Han, Luyi
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Wiley Periodicals LLC
Abstract
The shale boom of the early 21st century turned the U.S. into an energy powerhouse and significantly disrupted local economies with shale resources. This study examines the impacts of the U.S. shale boom on regional patenting at a commuting zone level. The shale boom may negatively affect patents if it crowds out labor and capital investments in other non-energy industries. Our findings show that a one standard deviation increase in non-vertical well density decreases patent intensity by 3.74% of the mean. Areas with higher drilling densities have lower levels of patented innovation compared to their counterfactuals. This paper contributes to the existing literature related to the “natural resource curse.” We provide new evidence based on regional patenting, which is an important indicator for regional innovation and long-term economic growth.
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This article is published as Han, Luyi, and John V. Winters. "Did the US Fracking Boom Shale‐Shock Regional Patenting?." Growth and Change 55, no. 4 (2024): e12740. doi:10.1111/grow.12740.
JEL Classification: Q40, R11, O31
JEL Classification: Q40, R11, O31
Rights Statement
© 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
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Funding
This work was supported in part by the United States Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) under project #2022‐51150‐38139 and by the Pennsylvania State University and NIFA Multistate/Regional Research Appropriations under project #NE2249.