Mouhcine Guettabi

A new paper by ISER researchers Mouhcine Guettabi, Trang Tran, and Linda Leask aims to give some context to to the ongoing debate about how much Alaska's state government should be spending, as it faces big budget deficits. The paper look at state spending in several ways.

As of 2015 (the most recent year for which cross-state data are available), per-person spending by Alaska's state and local governments was twice the national average. But much of that gap is due to Alaska's unique spending programs (PFDs being the largest but not the only one), higher living costs, and federal grants that are twice the U.S. average per person.

Adjusting for Alaska's unique spending and higher living costs, spending per person in Wyoming (another oil-producing state with a small population) was higher than Alaska's in 2015. Spending in North Dakota (another oil-producer with a small population) was within 15% of Alaska's.

Over the 20-year period from 1992 to 2015, real (adjusted for inflation) spending per person in Alaska grew much slower than the national rate—50% compared with 73%. Alaska's spending did grow faster than the national rate in the last years of that period, when oil prices were high.

Download the paper, How Does Spending in Alaska Compare? A grant from Northrim Bank helped fund this research. If you have questions, get in touch with Mouhcine Guettabi, assistant professor of economics at ISER, at mguettabi@alaska.edu or 907-786-5496.

In 2017, job losses in Alaska's ongoing recession spread from the sectors first affected—primarily oil and gas and state government—to the sectors that depend on household spending, including retail trade, accommodation and food services, and leisure and hospitality. Alaska will continue losing jobs in 2018, but at a slower pace— likely in the range of 0.7%. That slower pace isn't a sign of recovery, but rather an indication that the initial shock of low oil prices has made its way through the economy.

These are among the findings of a new overview of Alaska's economic and fiscal conditions, by Mouhcine Guettabi, assistant professor of economics at ISER. He also estimates that the the fiscal uncertainty caused by the state's current lack of a plan for dealing with its huge budget deficit may be reducing capital investment in Alaska by something on the order of $200 million to $600 million a year. The overview also considers the effects of different rates of withdrawal from the Permanent Fund earnings reserve, should the legislature decide to use some of those earnings to pay for government operations.

Download the report, What Do We Know to Date about the Alaska Recession and the Fiscal Crunch? By Mouhcine Guettabi, with support from Northrim Bank. If you have questions, get in touch with the author at mguettabi@alaska.edu or 907-786-5496.

Mouhcine Guettabi and Andrew Bibler, both assistant professors of economics at ISER, recently compared the paychecks of people in private and public sector jobs in Alaska. Using Alaska Department of Labor data from 2001 through 2016, they found:

• Average earnings are higher in the private than the public sector. That's because men earn more than women, and men make up a bigger share of private workers—55%, compared with 43% in the public sector.

• Men who work for state and local governments earn on average about $2,000 less per quarter than men working for private businesses. The reason why is that overall, men who take public-sector jobs start out at considerably lower wages—and their wages don't catch up over time, even though they increase somewhat faster than private wages.

• Women working for state and local governments earn on average about $500 more per quarter than women in private-industry jobs. That's because overall, the starting salaries for women in public and private jobs are similar, and salaries for women in public-sector jobs grow faster as they spend time in their jobs.

Download Public and Private Sector Earnings in Alaska, prepared for the Alaska Department of Administration, by Mouhcine Guettabi and Andrew Bibler. If you have questions, get in touch with Mouhcine Guettabi at mguettabi@alaska.edu or 907-786-5496 or Andrew Bibler at ajbibler@alaska.edu or 907-786-5452.

The state government provides considerable money to Alaska’s local governments—but so far there has been little analysis of how the precipitous decline in state revenues might affect local governments. A new report by Mouhcine Guettabi, an assistant professor of economics at ISER, assesses how much Alaska’s borough governments rely on state aid and considers how vulnerable they are to cuts in that aid.

The author found that overall, boroughs depend much more on state dollars now than they did 10 years ago—the average share of borough revenues coming from the state increased from 12% to 28% between 2005 and 2015. But he also shows that some boroughs rely much more than others on state money—and are therefore more vulnerable to inevitable cuts in state aid.

To learn more, download the report, A Regional Assessment of Borough Government Finances and Employment (PDF, 1.8MB). If you have questions, get in touch with Mouhcine Guettabi at mguettabi@alaska.edu or 907-786-5496.

Much of the natural-resource development in Alaska happens in isolated, rural areas. Do local residents get jobs and other benefits from those developments? Mouhcine Guettabi, an assistant professor of economics at ISER, is assessing that question in two papers he is currently working on.

In the first paper, he is using employment by place of work and by place of residence to determine whether local residents of an isolated borough with oil development get a share of the new jobs created when oil prices spike up. In the second, he is looking at the causal effects of the Red Dog mine on employment, wages, and other measures in the Northwest Arctic Borough, where the mine has been operating since the 1980s.

Please join us at ISER to hear what he has found so far.

When: Friday, April 28, 12 to 1

The Anchorage School District and Providence Alaska Medical Center have made wearable activity trackers available for Anchorage school students who choose to use them. Mouhcine Guettabi, an assistant professor of economics at ISER, is assessing how wearing these devices affects physical activity among school kids. In a recent experiment, he gave students in grades three through six different levels of access to feedback from the activity trackers. Some students could go online any time to get information, but others could get feedback only once every two weeks. Join us at ISER to hear Dr. Guettabi discuss whether having more access to feedback made kids more active.

Alaska lost nearly 2,300 jobs—about 1% of all wages and salary jobs— from March 2014 through March 2016. But not all areas of the state and sectors of the economy lost jobs. In a new paper, Mouhcine Guettabi, assistant professor of economics at ISER, examines jobs losses statewide and by area and economic sector. This is the first in a series of short papers that will examine various economic and fiscal issues important to Alaska.

Download the paper (PDF, 752KB). If you have questions, call the author at 907-786-5496 or email him at mguettabi@alaska.edu.

Are state workers better paid than their counterparts in private industry? That question is likely to come up more often, as the state deals with a huge budget shortfall. The answer is generally no, but there are exceptions for individual occupations.

That’s the main finding of ISER economists Mouhcine Guettabi and Matthew Berman, who did the research for the Alaska Department of Administration. They analyzed the question in two ways, using different data sources. Both analysts reached the same broad conclusion: state workers are not on average paid more, whether you include just wages, or total compensation—wages plus benefits.

To see highlights of the findings, download the summary, Who Has Better Pay and Benefits—Workers in State Government or Private Industry? (PDF, 759KB) For more detailed information, download the full report, Overpaid or Underpaid? Public Employee Compensation in the State of Alaska (PDF, 3.04MB). If you have questions, get in touch with Mouhcine Guettabi, assistant professor of economics, at 907-786-5496 or mguettabi@alaska.edu, or Matthew Berman, professor of economics, at 907-786-5426 or mdberman@alaska.edu.