Economy / Fiscal Policy

Spending for construction in Alaska—including both public and private spending—will be about $9.2 billion in 2014, up 18% from spending in 2013. Increased spending by the oil and gas industry will account for most of the growth in private spending, and a larger Department of Defense budget will lead growth in public spending. State-funded projects will also be a major part of construction spending, with a number of projects that were funded in recent large state capital budgets starting or continuing in 2014. 

Scott Goldsmith, professor emeritus of economics at ISER, has updated his estimate of how much Alaska's state government can afford to spend each year, without risking sudden big budget deficits and economic hardships for Alaskans, as it deals with declining oil revenues. 

Download the paper .

ISER has now launched the Alaska Energy Data Gateway, a new online database with energy data—most of it at the community level—from across Alaska: https://akenergygateway.alaska.edu/  The site provides data from many sources, through a single access point. The data can be downloaded in a variety of file formats. 

Join us for a conversation with Todd Moss, editor of The Governor’s Solution and vice president of the Center for Global Development.  The Governor’s Solution features the firsthand account of Governor Jay Hammond describing the birth of the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend, which has been paid to each state resident every year since 1982.

Alaska relies much more on air and water transportation than the Lower 48 states do, so it's especially vulnerable to the kinds of fuel price spikes that happened in mid-2008 and again between 2009 and 2010. A new report analyzes how higher fuel prices affect the costs of transportation in the state and work their way through the economy. It is the first study of this kind for Alaska. The authors are ISER economists Ginny Fay, Tobias Schwörer, Mouhcine Guettabi, and Jeffrey Armagost. 

A presentation by Scott Goldsmith, professor emeritus of economics at ISER, to Commonwealth North, examining whether the state government is saving enough of its petroleum wealth to sustain economic prosperity into the future—and if the state isn't saving enough, how it could. 

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The estimated value of construction spending in Alaska in 2013 will be about $8.4 billion, up 8% from spending in 2012. That's according to the 2013 Alaska Construction Spending Forecast, prepared by Scott Goldsmith and Mouhcine Guettabi of ISER for the Associated General Contractors of Alaska. More spending in the oil and gas sector will account for most of the growth.

Alaska's state government can afford to spend about $5.5 billion in fiscal year 2014 (July 2013 to June 2014). That's the most recent estimate of the level of General Fund spending the state can sustain over the long run, from a new paper by Scott Goldsmith, professor emeritus of economics at ISER. The $5.5 billion figure is based on the state's current petroleum nest egg of about $149 billion. The nest egg is a combination of state financial assets (the Permanent Fund and cash reserves) and the value of petroleum still in the ground.