Montana State University economist examines oil booms’ impacts on rural poverty

A Montana State University economist and his co-author were recognized by the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists for the innovative thinking behind their paper on how oil booms influence poverty rates in rural areas.

For “Left in the Dark,” Smith and Wills, a fellow Oxford postdoc, used this method of combining lights data and spatial mapping to look at the impact of global booms — both from spikes in oil prices and new oil discoveries — between 2003 and 2013 based on changes in rural poverty in the boom areas.