In the last several years the majority of attention regarding energy production in North Dakota focused on oil and gas. The increased contribution of energy (oil and gas in particular) to GDP growth was significant as I showed before. The other day I watched a train with at least fifty cars full of coal go by and I wondered what happened with coal production over the last few years.
I imagine the different sectors of economic activity in any state argue about their relative importance. Lately the contest in North Dakota has been about the relative importance of agriculture and mining. My personal opinion is that if the data support an actual argument of this point than you are fortunate enough. These debates rage though and so I tend to investigate. There are many different ways to approach these types of questions but I am not going to go through a refereeing of different methods. I will just go through what I think the data are trying to impart to us.
Continue reading Agriculture v. Mining, North Dakota Edition
Most recent discussion of oil markets focused on prices and the volatility of price movements. These are surely very important, and the driver of almost everything else happening in energy markets. Looking at North Dakota here is the percentage change in labor force (year-over-year) for North Dakota as a whole and for the four core Bakken oil counties.
The news of arrests and the booming scandal in world soccer was not a surprise today. FIFA is not an organization known for transparency and good governance. This led me to consider the situation in other sporting leagues, and I think they are all prone to scandal. I am not talking about the silliness related to Tom Brady and football security, I mean real scandals. Domestic abuse in the NFL. Concussions in the NFL. Steroid use in baseball. There is probably something in hockey but most people are not watching and do not care.
The issue of property tax valuations is a familiar one to most people in North Dakota. I came across this article about the situation in Michigan through a tweet. It is about a month old but it raises some interesting questions. The focus of the debate in North Dakota, as far as I ever heard, has been property taxes paid by individual homeowners. In Michigan businesses are challenging valuations, winning, and the local areas are dealing with revenue shortfalls as a result.