News and Announcement

Alaska’s state government is sitting pretty right now, with oil revenues at record levels, $60 billion in savings, and maybe another $100 billion worth of petroleum in the ground. Still, a new paper by Scott Goldsmith, professor emeritus of economics at ISER, finds that trouble is looming, with declining oil production and growing state spending. 

The first analysis of the economic effects of invasive species in Alaska finds that governments and nonprofit groups spent about $29 million from 2007 to 2011, or nearly $6 million a year, to manage those species. Tobias Schwörer of ISER and Rebekka Federer and Howard Ferren of the Alaska SeaLife Center did the analysis, based on a survey of public and private organizations that deal with invasive species around the state. The research was funded by several federal and state agencies.

Two new publications by Ginny Fay and Alejandra Villalobos Melendez of ISER provide the big picture of electricity around Alaska. Both are based on research done for the Alaska Energy Authority.

Oil started flowing through the trans-Alaska 35 years ago this summer, on June 20, 1977. Since then, the state government has collected $170 billion in revenues from North Slope oil, in today's dollars. A new paper by Scott Goldsmith, professor emeritus of economics at ISER, assesses what the state has done with its oil wealth so far. 

To read the paper, click here (PDF, 944.8KB).

Broadband (high speed Internet) is being extended to 65 communities in Southwest Alaska. As part of its ongoing research on the role of telecommunications in the socio-economic development of rural Alaska, ISER is conducting a telephone survey in SW Alaska in June. The purpose of the survey is to learn about current access to the Internet and what different high speed Internet could make for residents of the region. 

Sara Komarnisky is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. She has been a visiting research scholar at ISER since September 2011, and is in Anchorage working on an ethnographic project that traces the connections between Anchorage and a town in the state of Michoacan, Mexico. Please join us for an informal discussion about what she’s learned so far. 

When: Tuesday, June 5, 12 to 1 

Where: ISER Conference Room, Fifth Floor, Diplomacy Building. Free parking.

A new analysis by Scott Goldsmith and Sohrab Pathan at the Institute of Social and Economic Research and Nathan Wiltse at the Cold Climate Housing Research Center looks at broad effects of the state Home Energy Rebate Program so far. That program rebates homeowners part of what they spend to make their houses more energy-efficient and less expensive to heat. The analysis was done for the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, which administers the program. 

After nearly a decade of explosive growth, federal spending in Alaska has turned flat. A new analysis of federal spending in Alaska by Scott Goldsmith, professor of economics at ISER, finds that except for temporary stimulus funds provided under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, federal spending in the state has been roughly the same for the past several years. The analysis discusses the composition of federal spending in Alaska, reviews stimulus spending, and provides examples of the importance of federal funds to the state economy.