Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Public Sector, Migration, And Heterogeneity, Carlos J. Lopes

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Questions on the optimal size of government always provoke intense political debate. At the center of this is the public goods problem, where certain goods and services are “under-provided” by the market due to problems with rivalry and excludability. These goods are usually provided by the public sector and financed through taxes. Questions emerge over the optimal level of provision, as different individuals value these goods differently. This dissertation consists of two studies which address preferences for the size of government from different perspectives.

The first study provides a method that can be used to estimate demand for changes in …

The Effects Of Minimum Salaries On Firm Tenure, Career Length, And The Experience Distribution: Evidence From The National Football League, Johnny C. Ducking

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

I use data from the National Football League (NFL) to analyze the impact of minimum salaries on an employee’s firm tenure, an employee’s career length, and an employer’s distribution of employee experience. The NFL has a salary structure in which the minimum salary a player can receive increases with the player’s years of experience. Salary schedules similar to the NFL’s exist in public education, Secret Service, Internal Revenue Service, other federal government agencies, the Episcopalian church, and unionized industries. Even though the magnitude of the salaries in the NFL differs from other industries, this study provides insight to the impact …

Opportunity Cost Of Land And Urban Growth, Bo Jiang

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

This study examines the impact of the opportunity cost of urban land on urban growth. Based on prices, costs and productivity data on agricultural commodities at county levels, the opportunity cost of land was measured by the weighted revenue, cost, and government payment per acre of farm lands. Aggregating county data to metropolitan area levels, a panel data for 269 metropolitan areas from 1978-2000 were constructed. This study found that, as predicted by the theory, cities grow slower when revenue increases or cost decrease in the area. The impact of commodity program payment was also examined. Our results show that …

Price Levels And Dispersion With Asymmetric Information, Tanmoy Bhattacharya

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

In the extensive literature on price dispersions that exists to date, there is a gap in the analysis of how market structure affects prices as well as the degree of dispersion in prices. Specifically, the literature is deficient in analyzing how price levels and price dispersion are affected by the number of firms operating in a market. I use secondary data to look at the prices of prescription drugs at the retail level in nine hundred and seventy pharmacies across one hundred and sixty five markets in Maryland and compare price dispersion across these brick and mortar pharmacies as well …

Local Economic Development: Researching Clusters In Woodford County, Kentucky, Tom Middleton

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Woodford Tomorrow, a citizen economic development planning group in Woodford County, is interested in promoting cluster development. Clusters are a geographic concentration of businesses and institutions which interact and collaborate within a particular economic sector. This report provides quantitative analysis of three clusters: (1) health, (2) agriculture, and (3) arts, entertainment, and tourism. The majority of this data comes from the consulting firm Economic Modeling Specialists Inc.

The agriculture cluster has many industries, specifically in the crop and animal production and manufacturing sectors, which appear to be potential industries to target. The hotel and motel industry seems to be an …

Comparative Analysis Of Rural And Urban Start-Up Entrepreneurs, Hyunjeong Joo

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

This study investigates the reasons for apparent differences in entrepreneurship rates in rural and urban areas using a Survey of Rural Kentucky Residents (SRKR) and the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED) data. We estimate the determinants of dissimilar characteristics for rural and urban areas in two aspects: one is individual and contextual resources; the other is cultural tendencies of resources.

The results of the analysis suggest that the difference in available individual, economic, and social support resources does not explain the observed difference in entrepreneurship rate. The results also indicate that gender, ethnicity, income, and number of children in …

Essays On Human Capital, Health Capital, And The Labor Market, Charles Hokayem

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays concerning the effects of human capital and health capital on the labor market. Chapter 1 presents a structural model that incorporates a health capital stock to the traditional learning-by-doing model. The model allows health to affect future wages by interrupting current labor supply and on-the-job human capital accumulation. Using data on sick time from the Panel Study Income of Dynamics the model is estimated using a nonlinear Generalized Method of Moments estimator. The results show human capital production exhibits diminishing returns. Health capital production increases with the current stock of health capital, or better …

Whole Farm Modeling Of Precision Agriculture Technologies, Jordan Murphy Shockley

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation investigated farm management concerns faced by grain producers due to the acquisition of various precision agriculture technologies. The technologies evaluated in the three manuscripts included 1) auto-steer navigation, 2) automatic section control, and 3) autonomous machinery. Each manuscript utilized a multifaceted economic model in a whole-farm decision-making framework to determine the impact of precision agriculture technology on machinery management, production management, and risk management. This approach allowed for a thorough investigation into various precision agriculture technologies which helped address the relative dearth of economic studies of precision agriculture and farm management. Moreover, the research conducted on the above …

Public School Choice And The Public-Private School Decision, Kylie Goggins

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a compilation of three studies related to public school choice issues. Chapter 2 examines whether access to public schools of choice influences a household’s decision to choose private school for their child. I employ a multistate, individual-level data-set on students and their families — for which I have been granted access to restricted geo-code information. I supplement these data by matching students with their respective school districts using geographic information systems (GIS); I then examine whether relative measures of public school choice (PSC) in a school district influence the household’s public-private school decision. I find slight evidence …

Career Interruptions: Wage And Gender Effects, Jill Kearns

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the effects of career interruptions on workers’ wages. In chapter four I examine whether controlling for the type of interruption differently affects men’s and women’s wages and therefore can be used to explain the remaining gender wage differences. The increased participation of married women in the labor force has increased their wages from just 30% of men’s wages in 1890 to nearly 80% as of 2001. Thus, although the gender wage gap has narrowed over time, it has yet to be eliminated. One argument for the persistence of the gender wage gap is that previously researchers have …

Market Structure And Mortgage Pricing: The Role Of Information In Firm And Consumer Behavior, Abdullah A. Al-Bahrani

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes information, market structure, and firm pricing strate-gies. I begin the dissertation with an analysis of the market structure of the mortgage in-dustry. I find that the configuration of the mortgage market at its present state is vastly different than its historical structure. The reduction in the cost of transmitting informa-tion has increased the collaborative environment and facilitated the dis-integration of the supply chain. Generally, the mortgage industry has been successful at reducing principal-agent problems and minimizing asymmetric information concerns that arise in segmented markets.

In the first essay I provide a theoretical explanation of the effect of …

The Labor Market, Political Capital, And Ownership Sector In Urban China, Xi Pan

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Over the past three decades, economic reforms have brought about dramatic changes in China. The wave of structural and economic reforms regarding the State-owned Sector (SOS), and the surge of the Non-State-owned Sector (NSOS), have influenced returns in the labor market, such as the returns concerning human capital and political capital in urban China. Presumably, the NSOS would be more marketed-oriented compared to the SOS, and it would have different returns concerning political capital, as represented by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) membership. This is likely because the NSOS would not value Party membership as much as the SOS does. The …

The Relationship Between Information Technology And Construction Productivity, Dong Zhai

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Over the past decades, information technology has been impacting industries, economics, the way of life and even the culture throughout the world. Productivity has been attracting much attention as an important indicator of economics, and numerous researchers have investigated the relationship between information technology and productivity. Construction is one of the largest industries in the United States, but little research has been conducted to investigate the relationship between information technology and construction productivity.

The major objective of this dissertation is to determine the degree (if any) to which information technology usage, specifically the use of information technology to automate and …

Three Essays On Exchange Rate Economics, Gil Kim

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

A country’s economy is becoming more and more dynamic and complicated in its scale and mobility. So, the concerns of exchange rate economics have become more popular. My research interest is in international economics with its major factor, exchange rates and other macroeconomic variables. Chapter 1 presents a brief introduction of the three studies.

Chapter Two investigate the role of exchange rate changes with particular attention to international capital flows. With liberalization of capital movements, international capital movements became free and unrestricted in many emerging market economies as well as developed countries. Using a Vector Auto-regressive (VAR) model for a …

Competitive Strategy, Alliance Networks, And Firm Performance, Goce Andrevski

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the interplay between competitive strategy and alliance network structure in explaining firm performance in highly volatile environments (e.g., personal computers or consumer electronics). In particular, I examine the following three questions: (1) Which competitive strategies enable firms to gain superior performance? (2) How do these strategies affect the firm‘s networking behavior and lead to the formation of particular network positions? (3) What optimal combinations of competitive strategies and network structures maximize firm performance?

Firms can outperform rivals by pursuing two types of competitive strategies: advantage-creating and advantage-enhancing. Each of these strategies creates different needs, motivations, and opportunities …

Three Essays On Residential Real Estate Brokerage, Jason S. Beck

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

The first essay investigates how individual characteristics influence sales outcomes for houses they help transact. It develops hedonic housing models to assess the impacts of agent characteristics such as the level of recent and concurrent agent activity on sales outcomes (price and time on market). This is done in a Multiple Listing Service (MLS) setting using seven years of data obtained from a large Midwestern city. I find evidence that more active listing agents sell homes more quickly, though they do so to the detriment of final sales price. I also find that more listings concurrently held by agents have …

Three Essays On The Black White Wage Gap, Nola Ogunro

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

During the 1960s and early 1970s, the black – white wage gap narrowed significantly, but has remained constant since the late 1980s. The black – white wage gap in the recent period may reflect differences in human capital. A key component of human capital is labor market experience. The first chapter of this dissertation examines how differences in the returns and patterns of experience accumulation affect the black – white wage gap. Accounting for differences in the nature of experience accumulation does not explain the very large gap in wages between blacks and whites. Instead, the wage gap seems to …

Agglomeration Economies And Geographic Concentration Of Manufacturing In Ukraine, Volodymyr Vakhitov

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

As a post-Soviet economy, Ukraine has inherited substantial production assets and qualified personnel. However, the economy was dominated by large-scale enterprises designed for much bigger markets. After the collapse of the Soviet Union Ukrainian firms faced lack of planning, breaks in contacts with their former suppliers and customers, and distortion of prices. There was a clear need in restructuring of the entire economy. Restructuring included splitting firms into smaller parts and privatization. The first phase of transition was completed by 2000 when the output grew for the first time after a long recession in nineties, and most firms became private …

The Impact Of Revenue Diversification And Economic Base On Revenue Stability: An Empirical Analysis Of County And State Governments, Wenli Yan

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

In recent decades, revenue diversification has become a prevalent practice in state and local government finance. The trend of revenue diversification, according to the portfolio theory, has far-reaching implication for public financial management as it may change revenue stability, which has been an important policy objective for state and local government administrators. This study explores how revenue diversification affects revenue stability from both empirical and theoretical perspectives. Drawing on portfolio theory and regional science literature, this study develops a theoretical framework to explain how the effect of revenue diversification on revenue volatility of sub-national governments varies in terms of its …

Three Essays On Regional Economic Integration And Exchange Rate Regimes, Xiaodan Zhao

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three independent essays addressing several key issues related to the empirical application of optimum currency area. The first essay explores the features of the CFA franc zone by operationalizing Robert Mundell’s (1952) criteria for an optimum currency area. A vector autoregression method is used in modeling national outputs as determined by global, regional and country-specific shocks. It finds that domestic outputs of the CFA franc zone countries are strongly influenced by country-specific shocks. These results suggest that the CFA franc zone countries are structurally different from each other and the monetary union may have been a …

Unreimbursed Emergency Department Costs Incurred By Hispanic Workers And Their Dependents In Central Kentucky, Sandra L. Senft

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Health care costs in the United States are a concern to policy makers, healthcare providers, and the population using medical services. Because fewer individuals have health insurance, as costs continue to rise, so have the levels of charity care provided through the Emergency Departments at many hospitals. Hispanics are a growing population thought to be receiving an increasing portion of this care. The Hispanic population in Kentucky has seen a significant increase in recent years, in large part because of the demand for agricultural workers. It has been established that a sizeable part of the Hispanic migrant worker community is …