Dr. Mouhcine Guettabi has completed an initial estimate of the possible impact of the COVID-19 business closures on the Alaska economy. To develop those estimates, he focused upon the impacts on the three most directly affected industries: leisure and hospitality, retail, and transportation. He estimated that the direct and indirect […]
Faculty members Dr. Mouhcine Guettabi and Dr. Kevin Berry answer questions about the COVID-19 pandemic in the latest releases of Ask a UAA Expert. Dr. Guettabi answers questions related to the State economic consequences while Dr. Berry addresses pandemic economics. Check out the videos!
The Institute of Social and Economic Research’s Professor Kevin Berry recently discussed the coronavirus with both Alaska Public Media and KTUU. He says the oil, fishing, tourism and cargo industries may be especially susceptible to the effects of the outbreak. […]
In 2019, the Alaska economy emerged from a 3-year recession after losing more than 11,000 jobs between 2015 and 2018. The recovery has, however, been modest as employment averaged 0.4% or 1,400 more jobs between January and November 2019 relative to the same period last year. Oil & Gas and Construction have led this growth as they averaged 510 and 720 more jobs, respectively. It is also important to note that the recovery has been uneven. While we only have borough level data until the month of June, figure 1 shows that a considerable number of boroughs/census areas were still losing jobs as of June 2019.
In this brief, we summarize the state’s unrestricted general fund revenues, agency operations spending, and capital budget spending between fiscal years 1975 and 2021. The severe decline in oil prices in 2015 resulted in a significant revenue decline which has then resulted in spending reductions at both the agency operation level and the capital budget. For fiscal year 2021, capital spending per person will be the third lowest since 1975 and Agency Operations will be the sixth lowest in real dollars.
Two emeriti ISER directors, Scott Goldsmith and Gunnar Knapp, debated how best to manage the Permanent Fund at a Commonwealth North lunch at the Petroleum Club on November 8, 2019. The specific resolution for the debate was: “Resolved: The Alaska Constitution should be amended to specify that the Permanent Fund […]
Not surprisingly, Alaskans remain keenly interested in both the short-term and long-term prospects for the Alaska economy. ISER continues to give requested presentations on the Alaska economy and the state budget to civic groups. On October 18, Mouhcine Guettabi and Ralph Townsend participated in a panel entitled “Alaska’s Economy: Facts, […]
Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) Associate Professor of Economics, Dr. Mouhcine Guettabi, recently released his report, A simple decomposition of Alaska’s labor force participation rate, which details his research surrounding the steady decline in the percentage of people working or seeking employment over the past two decades […]
Institute of Social and Economic Research Associate Professor of Economics, Dr. Mouhcine Guettabi, is to participate on an upcoming panel to follow up on the forum earlier this year, The Costs of Alaska’s Economic Roller Coaster, which examined and discussed the costs of a start-and-stop economy and […]
Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) Assistant Professor of Economics, Dr. Kevin Berry, recently published a report for Bike Anchorage and the Municipality of Anchorage estimating and evaluating the impact of organized promotional events on the number of individuals cycling to work in Anchorage, Alaska, specifically “Bike to Work […]
