Professor talks Flathead Valley economy

Economics professor Gregg Davis wasn’t always interested in economics, though his interest in natural resources began at an early age. In high school, Davis got a job working in a landscape nursery and fell in love with working in nature.

“I loved working with living things,” he said.

A Columbus, Ohio native, Davis was the son of a stay-at-home mom and the president of a publishing company. Seeking to further explore his love for nature, Davis began looking at forestry programs when he discovered the University of Montana.

He started school in the early ’70s to study to become a forester, but he only lasted a few quarters in the program before he realized that, despite his love for nature, forestry wasn’t the right fit.

From that point on, he “dabbled around in everything,” he said. Taking courses in one program and then another, he “majored” in about every discipline there was.

He eventually landed on anthropology as he was finishing his bachelor’s degree, though an interest in economics is what brought him back the following fall to attend the graduate program.

During the Carter Administration, Davis worked for a health systems agency in Helena. Five years into the position, it became apparent that the agency was at risk of losing its funding. Davis decided that it would be a good time to pursue a doctorate degree. He was accepted to West Virginia University with a generous research apprenticeship to study mineral resource economics.

Davis worked in varying professorship positions in Illinois, Louisiana and West Virginia — he even did a five-week teaching program in Hong Kong between positions. While teaching, he continued to work on his dissertation, which was on the effects of natural resource extraction. Davis found that when natural resources are exploited and leave the region they originated in, the money, too, leaves the region, and the value added occurs elsewhere.

The John Hopkins University Press picked up his dissertation, which eventually led to the publishing of a book with a forward by Wassily Leontief, one of the “kingpins” of input-output economics.

After spending five years in West Virginia, a friend told him about a position available at Flathead Valley Community College. Davis jumped at the opportunity to return to Montana, and moved back in 1993.

Davis continued working at FVCC before having a four-year stint in Missoula working on health-care economics for the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Montana. The position was entirely research-based, studying the affect on economics of the recently-passed Affordable Care Act.

While in Missoula, his wife and two sons stayed in the Flathead. They did the “weekend warrior” thing for four years before he returned home again.

Davis said it’s been an exciting time to teach economics, adding that economics is a topic that goes much deeper into common issues and topics than simply the looking at the numbers.

“Where we are today, I certainly didn’t see that 15 years ago,” Davis said. “I always knew tourism would be big, but health care just exploded. After the recession that is one of the fields we’ve continued to grow in and one of the top services we can offer [in the Flathead].”

“I thought we’d always be the community that would have to drive to Missoula for some things, but now you can get just about everything here,” he added.

Davis said that in some ways, Montana was lucky in the recession because it didn’t have any of the large bank failures the rest of the country was experiencing. But it did have the real estate crash, he added, and the Flathead Valley was at the center of that crash.

It’s taken the valley longer than the rest of the nation to get back to peak employment levels, he said, having only just reached the pre-recession level in 2015.

Though he said the valley is better positioned for the future since the crisis.

“Compared to even 40 years ago, we’re transitioning from a natural resource economy to a service economy, which is good because natural resource economies are very boom and bust,” he said. “A service economy is not at risk as much for a recession.”

At the center of the valley’s service-based economy are the leading industries of health care and tourism.

He said the valley over the years has grown considerably — an indicator of a healthy economy — though he cautions growing “too fast.”

“Hopefully we’ll continue to have a steady growth, not robust growth, we don’t want it to become a bubble because bubbles burst,” he said.

For the Flathead Valley, however, Davis said the biggest struggle, in his opinion, isn’t growing too fast, but growing in a way that destroys the valley’s many natural amenities.

“The greatest struggle this valley has is growth without destroying the beauty,” he said.

Though Davis said it’s challenging to say what the future will bring, he is currently working on a developing leading index to better track the local economy. By surveying local businesses directly every six months, Davis hopes he will be able to pick up on trends faster and better predict where the economy is going.

Looking back on his career, Davis said his degrees in economics are what propelled him into every job he ever had, leading to a 32-year career as a teacher. He “never had to hit the streets” to find a job, he added.

“When I graduated with a college degree that was kind of the Willy Wonka’s golden ticket to getting a job,” he said. “That’s not the case for millennials today.”

Though Davis’ advice to young workers today isn’t to skip out on a higher education, but to pay attention to the trends and pick a field that will add value to the economy in the years to come.

Reporter Alyssa Gray may be reached at 758-4433 or agray@dailyinterlake.com.