RESOURCE ALLOCATION AND MARKET DYNAMICS: A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF UNCOMPLETED OIL WELLS' GROWTH, AGRICULTURAL TRADE LIBERALIZATION, AND PUBLIC HEALTH INVESTMENT

Dipanwita  Barai

doi:10.7273/000007320

This dissertation explores critical issues in resource allocation and market dynamics across three interconnected domains: energy economics, agricultural trade, and public health investment. The first study examines the growth of uncompleted oil wells in the United States, focusing on the effects of inventories, capital expenditures, and economic factors across key oil-producing regions. A theoretical model incorporating exploration and development capital expenditures is developed, followed by empirical validation using Autoregressive Distributed Lag models with monthly data from 2013 to 2019. The findings reveal that exploration capital expenditures increase uncompleted well growth, whereas completion capital expenditures have the opposite effect. Additionally, the study highlights the heterogeneous effects of oil prices, refiner acquisition capital expenditures, reserves, rig count, pipeline capacity, and exports on uncompleted well growth in both the short and long run. The analysis also examines the impact of the 2016 repeal of the U.S. crude oil export ban, demonstrating its significant influence on uncompleted well growth at the national level and in the Haynesville region. The second study evaluates the impact of COVID-19 on U.S. meat and grain exports using a structural gravity model and counterfactual analysis. Utilizing monthly data from 2015 to 2022, the study finds that new deaths in U.S. trading partners reduce beef, poultry, and corn exports, while increased vaccinations in the United States boost meat and grain exports. Counterfactual analysis suggests that, absent the pandemic, U.S. beef, poultry, and corn exports would have been significantly higher, increasing by approximately $1.8 billion, $0.4 billion, and $4.6 billion, respectively, on average for 2020, 2021, and 2022. These findings highlight the vulnerabilities of agricultural trade to global health crises and provide insights for strengthening food supply chain resilience. The third study examines the transboundary nature of disease outbreaks and the challenges posed by varying national incentives for preventive investment. Using a game-theoretic framework, the study determines optimal investment levels and compares ex-ante preventive investments under centralized and decentralized decision-making for spatially adjacent, heterogeneous countries. The model incorporates both prevention and mitigation costs while accounting for unit-level analysis, considering individual animals or entire herds. The findings reveal that decentralized decision-making neglects spatial spillover effects, leading to suboptimal investment, whereas centralized coordination reduces outbreak risk and expected losses. However, trade sanctions on high-risk countries can create low-investment equilibria, where no country has an incentive to unilaterally increase investment. To address this, the study proposes an international transfer scheme with asymmetric investment, demonstrating that multilateral agreements can achieve Pareto improvements. Together, these three essays provide a comprehensive analysis of market dynamics, policy interventions, and strategic decision-making in energy, trade, and public health, offering valuable insights for policymakers and industry stakeholders.

RESOURCE ALLOCATION AND MARKET DYNAMICS: A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF UNCOMPLETED OIL WELLS' GROWTH, AGRICULTURAL TRADE LIBERALIZATION, AND PUBLIC HEALTH INVESTMENT

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