CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2022
| Author | Flanek, Szilvia |
|---|---|
| Title | Coal Keeps the Lights on? Coal Mine Closures and Local Labor Markets in the US |
| Summary | Energy transitions are inclined to have winners and losers, which contributes to the polarization of nations. In the US the widespread „Coal Keeps the Lights on” narrative is not only pointing out that coal is necessary to generate electricity, but also infers that the economy is dependent on a thriving coal industry on a deeper level. One concern is that closing coal mines increase local unemployment, which can have spillover effects on other local sectors. In this thesis, I aim to find out if coal mine closures were associated with increasing local unemployment in the Western and Interior coal mine basins of the US during the first two decades of the twenty-first century. To do so I apply the partially pooled synthetic control method in an event study setting with staggered adoption based on the propositions of Ben-Micahel et al (2019) on the county-level unemployment rate and detailed mine level characteristics information. I found no significant effect of mine closures on the local unemployment rate, which can be explained by the flexibility of the US labor markets both by local adjustment and migration. My results suggest that the „Coal Keeps the Lights On” narrative is at least in parts incorrect, however further research on the impact on other outcomes is required. |
| Supervisor | LaBelle, Michael |
| Department | Economics MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2022/flanek_szilvia.pdf |
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