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Economic Cost of a Rent-Induced Business Cycle: Alaska Petrodollar Boom
Scott Goldsmith
Presented at the annual meeting of the Western Regional Science Association in Monterey, California
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Alaska Economic Indicators
Scott Goldsmith and Alexandra Hill
Analysis of the economic indicators clearly shows the deceleration of the Alaska economy which has occurred in 1991. The influence of the oil spill cleanup effort is no longer a significant factor in determining the course of the economy, thus allowing the other economic drivers to reassert their influence. This report is made up primarily of tabulated and charted data with a short commentary regarding key economic indicators of employment, income, and 'miscellaneous' items such as building activity.
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Tracking the Structure of the Alaska Economy: The ISER MAP Database
Scott Goldsmith and Teresa Hull
This document is predominantly tabulated data with no interpretive or contextual information.
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What Do Alaskan's with Disabilities Need?
Virgene Hanna
More than 20,000 Alaskas - 4 percent of the state population- are disabled and live outside institutions. Most of them of getting medical care, but many lack special equipment, information, and other help they need. These are among the findings of a recent ISER survey of more than 4300 Alaska households. It is the first survey of its kind in the nation to determine how many disabled persons live on their own and what they need to continue living independently.
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An Assessment of the Needs of Alaska Residents Who Are Disabled
Virgene Hanna and Jack Kruse
Over 20,000 Alaska residents currently experience at least one form of disability. This estimate is based on a telephone survey of 4,364 households randomly selected to represent all households in the state of Alaska. Among the most frequently reported disabilities are non-neuromuscular mobility impairments, arthritis, hearing impairments, and learning disabilities. Other disabilities involving at least 2,000 Alaska residents include visual impairments, cardiovascular or pulmonary disorders, neuromuscular impairment, emotional disability, communicative disability and head injuries. The survey was designed to identify reasons why people cannot get the specific help they need. The remainder of this section on independent living service needs displays statewide estimates by type of service. The reader may find it helpful to refer to the questionnaire reproduced in Appendix B when reviewing the tabulations.
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Economic Literacy and the Content of Television Network News
Lee Husky, Stephen Jackstadt, and Oliver Scott Goldsmith
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Development in Remote Regions: What Do We Know?
Lee Husky and Thomas Morehouse
This article assesses a recent body of research on economic development and socio-political change in northern and other remote regions of developed Western nations. The regions include northern Canada, Alaska, northern Scandinavia, Australia's Northern Territory, and Micronesia. Research topics covered are theoretical perspectives, resource development, Native claims, and village economies. "Remote regions" are physically, economically, and politically distant from center of wealth and power; they are culturally or ethnically diverse and sparsely settled; and they exhibit extreme limits on their autonomy, self-sufficiency, and welfare. "Development" of these regions is defined as the overcoming of internal and external obstacles to change in conditions associated with their remoteness. The authors ask whether the research has increased our understanding of the nature of these regions and of their development problems. Their answer is generally affirmative, but they also identify specific research gaps, problems, and needs. The latter include needs for more explicit theorizing, comparative and historical approaches, and research on resource ownership, Native claims outcomes, village subsistence, and population migration.
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Forest Service Acquisition of Harvested Native Lands in Southeast Alaska
Gunnar Knapp
This study describes Native lands in southeast Alaska and discusses the market value of these lands. The study was mandated by section 501(c) of the Tongass Timber Reform Act of 1990, to assess the feasibility of Forest Service acquisition of significantly harvested lands. During the course of the study, neither the Forest Service nor any Native corporations indicated either a specific or a general interest in such acquisitions; thus the study focuses on providing general background information about Native lands and their market value. A major problem in estimating market values for harvested timberland in southeast Alaska is that no sales of large tracts of harvested or unharvested lands have occurred. Large tracts might command significantly lower per-acre prices than have occurred in the past for small tracts. Appendixes to the report include maps showing the boundaries of Native timberlands and areas of significant timber harvesting; aerial photographs; and other detailed data.
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Geographic distribution of northern peoples of the USSR, 1970 nd 1979
Gunnar Knapp
Data on the geographic distribution of native peoples of the Soviet North, published for the 1970 and 1979 censuses (Tsentral' noye statistcheskoye upravleniye SSSR 1973, 1984), are summarized by administrative division and nationality for comparison with data for 1959, 1970 and 1979 given in Polar Record 20(125): 169-70 (1980). Of the Chukchi, Dolgany, Eskimosy, Itel'meny, Koryaki, Mansi, Nganasany, Saamy and Yakuty, more than 70% were reported to live within a single northern administrative division in 1979. More widely distributed were the Aleuty, Evenki, Eveny, Karely, Khanty, Sel'kupy and Yukagiry. The total population of northern native peoples was 915,096 in 1970 and 951,471 in 1979.
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Occupational Injury and Illness Rates in the Alaska Commercial Fishing Industry
Gunnar Knapp and Jennifer Christian
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Alaska's North Slope Borough Revisited
Gunnar Knapp and Thomas Morehouse
Alaska's North Slope Borough, established in 1972, is in many ways a unique institution of Native-controlled local government in the north. The borough represents a significant case study of Native self-determination under unusually favorable conditions: indigenous, local control of both resource wealth and political power. The North Slope Borough has been the instrument by which the Inupiat of the North Slope have successfully captured and used the oil wealth in their region, with clear economic and political benefits. They have gained high levels of local public services, jobs, and incomes; and effective representation in negotiations with external corporate and government authorities. The borough has also helped to preserve and adapt critical elements of traditional Inupiat culture. Costs of development and change under North Slope Borough leadership have included waste and inefficiency as well as crime and corruption. Centralized power in borough headquarters has reduced the independence of the borough villages and encouraged borough · citizens to act like clients and consumers. The Borough economy remains dependent upon uncertain tax revenues from the oil industry, with uncertain future employment opportunities for a rapidly growing Native population. North Slope Borough government has provided the Alaska arctic Inupiat with means to greater political self-sufficiency. Overall, the North Slope Borough has responded effectively, under great pressure, to the opportunities and the problems that petroleum development has brought to the region.
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Alaska Seafood Industry: Seafood Sector Report and Summary
Gunnar Knapp and Terrence Smith
The Alaska Seafood Industry Sector Report is a comprehensive review of Alaska's seafood harvesting and processing industry through the decade of the 1980s. This report provides an overview of the seafood industry in Alaska. We present basic information on fish and shellfish harvesting, processing,fisheries markets,seafood industry employment and income, publicrevenues and expenditures in support of fisheries,and product prices. Included under eachof these topics are separate data and discussion for salmon, shellfish, herring, halibut and bottornfish. The data presented focus on the last ten years of the fisheries,that is,1980-1989.
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The Alaska North Slope Inupiat and Resource Development: Why The Apparent Success?
Jack Kruse
The apparently positive experience of the Alaska's North Slope Inupiat Eskimo with the massive Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk oil field developments stands out among the generally grim experiences of indigenous peoples. The North Slope experience would thus seem to offer an excellent comparative case. To the extent that the positive image of the North Slope experience holds up, we can turn to the factors which appear to shape the relationship between resource development and indigenous people. The primary objective of the comparison is to take a small step towards the construction of a general conceptual framework.
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Hunting and Fishing in Southeast Alaska
Jack Kruse and Marybeth Holleman
In most southeast Alaska towns, households that don't hunt and fish are unusual. A recent survey of 30 southeast communities found that about 85 percent of households get at least some of their food by hunting and fishing. But among the thousands of households that hunt and fish, there are significant differences. Figure 1 shows that while 34 percent of survey households annually harvest just 1 to 80 pounds of fish and game per household member, nearly 10 percent harvest more than 500 pounds per household member. And while some households do not eat any wild fish and game, nearly a third of survey households get half or more of their total meat and fish by hunting and fishing. These are among the findings of the Tongass Resource Use Cooperative Study (TRUCS), a 1988 survey carried out jointly by the Institute of Social and Economic Research, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and the U.S. Forest Service. The study documents hunting and fishing for household use in all permanent southeast Alaska communities except the largest, Juneau and Ketchikan. This Review presents the findings of that survey. It also discusses how this kind of information could be useful to state policymakers trying to define who should be classified as subsistence users, and to federal and state land managers charged with protecting subsistence uses on public lands.
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Alaska Inupiat Subsistence and Wage Employement Patterns: Understanding Individual Choice
John A. Kruse
Following a decade of intense wage employment activity, North Slope Inupiat continue to engage in subsistence activities. Two surveys conduced a decade apart are used to examine the role individual choice in the persistence of subsistence activities. Survey results document an increase in labor force participation, an increase in household income, and a decrease in household size. At the same time, the percentage of households on the North Slope obtaining over half their food from subsistence activities has increased. These are other finding suggest that continued subsistence activity is not simply a matter of necessity; it is also a matter of individual choice. Subsistence harvest and distribution activities may offer benefits well beyond nutrition that are less commonly available in wage jobs. Further research in this area may not only help explain in the persistence of subsistence activities, but also provide a link with research on the mental wellbeing of Inupiat.
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Education Equity and Taxpayer Equity: A Review of the Alaska Public School Foundation Funding Program
Eric Larson and Matthew Berman
The Alaska Legislature asked ISER to examine what has driven up costs of Alaska's school districts in the past two decades, and to assess how the state's School Foundation Program could better achieve both taxpayer and education equity. This summary describes what we studied, reports how much specific categories of school costs went up and why, and outlines our conclusions and suggestions about taxpayer and education equity and the foundation program. We examined changes in the major categories of school operating costs over the past two decades. We studied operations spending not only because it makes up most of school district spending, but also because it is recurring, with a similar pattern year after year. Capital projects, by contrast, differ each year, depending on what districts and the legislature decide is most urgent, and on how much money the state has to spend for capital projects.
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Alaska's Gross State Product, 1961-1990
Eric Larson, Scott Goldsmith, and Steve Colt
Alaska's gross state product (GSP) in 1990 was almost $25 billion. That compares with less than $1 billion in 1961. Even if we adjust those figures to remove the effects of inflation, the real gross state product was still nearly 6 times bigger in 1990 than it had been 30 years earlier. GSP is a crucial measure of Alaska's economic capacity: of Alaska's ability to produce for the local, national, and world markets. But only a part of GSP stays in Alaska. A big share goes to multi-national oil companies, the federal government, and others outside Alaska. So when we talk about how much GSP grew in recent times, that doesn't all translate into economic benefits for Alaskans.
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Alaska Review of Social and Economic Conditions: hunting and fishing in southeast
Linda Leask and Monette Dalsfoist
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Who Will Pay for Balancing the Budget?
Linda Leask, Scott Goldsmith, Matthew Berman, and Alexandra Hill
Alaskans will pay more and get less from state government in the 1990s. But how will the burden of spending cuts and tax increases fall on richer and poorer and urban and rural households? That depends on which policies state officials choose. Alaska faces big and growing budget deficits because the petroleum revenues that mostly paid for state government in the 1980s are steadily shrinking. When those deficits will start is uncertain, but low world oil prices are erasing the budget surplus state officials had expected as a result of the Middle East war. This paper assesses how different taxing and spending policies could affect different kinds of households. As a measure of those effects we examine relative losses in disposable household income. Budget deficits will of course have other effects on households. Some households will be hurt a lot more than others by broad economic losses and reduced government services. Alaskans who lose their jobs will obviously suffer bigger losses than we describe. But relative household income loss is a good measure of the equity of various fiscal policies. We estimate losses in disposable household income by comparing how various fiscal policies reduce state transfer pay-ments and increase state and local taxes.
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Development in Remote Regions: What Do We Know?
Thomas Morehouse and Lee Huskey
This article assesses a recent body of research on economic development and socio-political change in northern and other remote regions of developed, western nations. The regions include northern Canada, Alaska, northern Scandinavia, Australia's Northern Territory, and Micronesia. Research topics covered are theoretical perspectives, resource development, Native claims, and village economies. "Remote regions" are physically, economically, and politically distant from centers of wealth and power; they are culturally or ethnically diverse and sparsely settled; and they exhibit extreme limits on their autonomy, self-sufficiency, and welfare. "Development" of these regions is defined as the overcoming of internal and external obstacles to change in conditions associated with their remoteness. The authors ask whether the research has increased our understanding of the nature of these regions and of their development problems. Their answer is generally affirmative, but they also identify specific research gaps, problems, and needs. The latter include needs for more explicit theorizing, comparative and historical approaches, and research on resource ownership, Native claims outcomes, village subsistence, and population migration.
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Developing a Public Consensus on Management of Spruce Beetles on the Kenai Peninsula
Robert Pelz and Jack Kruse
Newspapers and, to a lesser extent, television have actively reported on the spruce beetle Infestation. This may account for the unusually strong public consensus of the most serious problem with Kenai Peninsula forests. Over half of all Anchorage residents have read about the infestation, and public exposure to written accounts Is even higher among Kenai residents. The other major reason why the vast majority of southcentral residents point to the spruce beetle infestation as a major problem Is because over half of them (57 percent) have noticed dead and dying trees as they drive peninsula highways. This translates to 50,000 households who have observed dead trees (see Figure 11). Some 38,000 households have associated these dead trees with the spruce beetle infestation. During our Interviews with government and environmental group representatives we sought to Identify the ways In which dead or dying trees, the direct result of the spruce bark beetle, In turn affect the lives of South-central residents. We then tested out these Ideas In survey pretests, ultimately constructing a sequence of structured questions that we asked of every survey respondent. Our findings indicate that opinions are clearly mixed. Virtually equal percentages of each population group support leaving the areas as is or cutting, burning, and replanting.
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