Dataset and RATS code used for Marcellus Shale Fracking and Pennsylvania County-Level Employment Relative to Forecast

This research estimates parsimonious VARs models for each of Pennsylvania's 67 counties based on data from 1990 - 2009. County-level employment forecasts are then generated for each county, along with standard error bands, and each county's actual employment levels from 2010 - 2019 are compared against these forecasts. The goal is to ascertain the degree to which counties that engaged in extensive fracking activity outperformed employment forecasts relative to counties with lower fracking intensity. The data includes economic activity indices for the U.S. and the State of Pennsylvania from the Philadelphia Federal Reserve (downloaded from FRED) and county-level employment data for each of Pennsylvania's 67 counties.