Alaska
Alaska exhibits source-sink dynamics like a migratory species: 70% of revenue flows from oil exports while the state imports workers, goods, and increasingly federal subsidies.
Alaska exemplifies source-sink dynamics at continental scale: a resource-extraction economy that exports oil, gas, and seafood while importing nearly everything else, including much of its workforce. The state derives 70% of its revenue from petroleum, creating a classic case of obligate dependence—when oil prices dropped 30% from $105 to $72.50 per barrel, the state's economic model strained visibly. Production has declined 15% to 479,624 barrels per day, yet the entire fiscal structure still assumes oil flows.
The three-legged stool of Alaska's economy—petroleum, fishing, and federal spending—reveals ecological vulnerability to any single leg's failure. Commercial fishing, once reliably productive, saw widespread closures in 2023-2024 with collapsing prices across salmon, crab, and halibut fisheries. The Kodiak port remains among America's largest, but the catch fluctuates unpredictably. Meanwhile, federal spending now exceeds petroleum as the stabilizing force, making Alaska less an extractive economy than a transfer-dependent one.
Geographic isolation compounds these vulnerabilities. Like island biogeography theory predicts, Alaska's remoteness constrains economic diversity—the state ranked worst for business in 2025, with GDP growth of just 2.1% against 2.8% nationally. Yet this same isolation creates opportunity: the Trump administration's push to unlock the North Slope via the Willow Project and a proposed $40 billion LNG pipeline to Asia could reset the equation. With a $55.8 billion economy and the world's last great frontier of untapped resources, Alaska faces a fundamental question: can a specialist economy adapt before its niche disappears?