FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 25 Evidence of this is gleaned from higher average wages, but no change in the median wage. Beyond employment, we saw benefits to residents as per pupil expenditure is higher in school districts with higher levels of oil and gas production, even if overall school finances are not affected as the State takes away the excess income from the industry. Also, property tax bases increase with oil and gas revenues, and the local population sees lower county tax rates as a result. We could find little or no evidence of circumstances emerging over the period of our analysis that the booms would serve as a necessary element for a longer-term resource curse. While there are much wider debates to be had on the environmental impacts, on a purely economic basis, if anything, oil production has a positive effect on local incomes and school finances, and benefits the people living there. Dr Anita Schiller is a Lecturer in Economics, whose research interests include the impacts of natural hazards on societies, the effects of renewable and nonrenewable energy policies on local economies, and environmental economics. The paper Do Localities Benefits fromNatural Resource Extraction? by Professor Dakshina De Silva, of Lancaster University Management School, Professor Robert McComb, of Texas Tech University, and Dr Anita Schiller is published in The Energy Journal. The paper won the IAEE 2020 Energy Journal Best Paper Award. anita.schiller@lancaster.ac.uk
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