Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Horse Racing And Historical Horse Racing’S Impact On The Kentucky Economy: Possible Hhr Saturation?, Thomas E. Lambert

Faculty Scholarship

The Commonwealth of Kentucky currently has 5 thoroughbred racing tracks and 3 harness racing tracks (Kentucky Horse Racing Commission 2023 and Mint Julep Louisville 2021). As Table 1 below shows, the industry employees roughly 7,000 people (direct jobs), and these jobs annually support another 2,000 jobs or so throughout the state. These 2,000 jobs are jobs that are provided by the suppliers to the horse race tracks (indirect jobs) and jobs that are created by the spending of the race track employees and the employees of suppliers on food, housing, transportation, and clothing by vendors and retailers throughout the state …

Association Of Diabetes Prevalence With Labor Force Participation Rates In Kentucky Counties, Ryan Montgomery

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Compared to other states in the USA, Kentucky has one of the highest rates of diagnosed diabetes and one of the lowest levels of labor force participation. This project employs a multivariable linear regression model to estimate the correlation between county-level diabetes prevalence and county-level labor force participation rates in Kentucky counties from 2015-2019, using publicly available data from the Centers for Disease Control’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS). Labor force participation rates serve as the dependent variable and diabetes prevalence rates serve as the primary independent variable, alongside nine …

A Comparison Of The Economic Impact Of Horse Racing Tracks In Kentucky Versus Neighboring Indiana, Thomas E. Lambert

Faculty Scholarship

The Louisville metro area is one that spans two states—Kentucky and Indiana. Since the University of Louisville has many students and employees who come from the Hoosier State, it would be interesting to see how the two states compare when it comes to what has been labeled a “signature” industry for the Commonwealth of Kentucky—horse racing.

The Economic Impact Of Buying And Redeveloping Ellis Park By Churchill Downs, Thomas E. Lambert

Faculty Scholarship

Churchill Downs’ acquisition of Ellis Park Racing and Gaming in Henderson, Kentucky reflects the growing number of mergers across the US among racetracks, racetracks and casinos, and casinos with other casinos. Some years back, Ellis racetrack closed for one year due to declining profitability, yet after new ownership took over and a gaming center was added, it began a rebound in earnings (Courier and Press 2008). The $75 million that Churchill Downs plans to spend to transform Ellis Park (Schulz 2022) will have a much bigger impact than the construction, revamping, and expansion of park facilities. This is in addition …

Kentucky Annual Economic Report 2022, Michael W. Clark, James P. Ziliak, Simon Sheather

Kentucky Annual Economic Report

This report is one of the important ways that the Center for Business and Economic Research fulfills its mission to examine various aspects of Kentucky’s economy as directed by the Kentucky Revised Statutes (KRS 164.738). The analysis and data presented here cover a variety of topics that range from a discussion of Kentucky’s current economic climate to a broad presentation of factors affecting the economy.

The report covers numerous dimensions of Kentucky’s economy including the effects of COVID-19. As the pandemic approaches its third year, COVID-19 continues to dominate the economic narrative. Many aspects of the economy have improved substantially …

“Lord, Mr. Ford!" The Overall Estimated Economic Impacts Of The New Blueovalsk Battery Park In Glendale, Kentucky, Thomas E. Lambert

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Access To And Use Of Technology For Health: Comparisons Between Appalachian Kentuckians And The General U.S. Population, Robin C. Vanderpool, Lindsay R. Stradtman, Anna Gaysynsky, Quan Chen, Meghan Johnson, Bin Huang

Journal of Appalachian Health

Introduction: Technology may increase the availability of health information and enable health promoting behaviors. However, lack of access to and use of technology may also exacerbate disparities, particularly in rural communities with limited Internet access.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare Internet access, device ownership, and use of technology for health between Appalachian Kentuckians and the general U.S. population.
Methods: Findings from the 2017 Assessing the Health Status of Kentucky (ASK) survey were compared to national estimates from the Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) 5, Cycle 1 (2017), with a particular focus on degree of rurality. …

“We Just Need The Developer To Develop”: Entrepreneurialism, Financialization And Urban Redevelopment In Lexington, Kentucky, Kevin Ward, Andrew Wood

Geography Faculty Publications

Since the 1980s US city governments have increased their use of more speculative means of financing economic redevelopment. This has involved experimenting with a variety of financial and taxation instruments as a way of growing their economies and redeveloping their built environments. This very general tendency, of course, masks how some cities have done well through the use of these instruments while others have not. The work to date has tended to pivot around a “winner-loser dichotomy”, which emphasises either the capacity of US cities to be able to experiment and speculate through the use of one financial instrument or …

Chance Elections, Social Distancing Restrictions, And Kentucky's Early Covid-19 Experience, Charles J. Courtemanche, Joseph Garuccio, Anh Le, Joshua C. Pinkston, Aaron Yelowitz

Economics Faculty Publications

Early in the pandemic, slowing the spread of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) relied on non-pharmaceutical interventions. All U.S. states adopted social-distancing restrictions in March and April of 2020, though policies varied both in timing and scope. Compared to states with Democratic governors, those with Republican governors often adopted measures for shorter durations and with greater resistance from their residents. In Kentucky, an extremely close gubernatorial election immediately prior to the discovery of SARS-CoV-2 replaced a Republican incumbent with a Democrat, despite Republicans easily winning all other statewide races. This chance election result offers a unique opportunity to examine the …

Impact Of The Coronavirus Pandemic On Housing, Bethany L. Paris

Issue Brief on Topics Affecting Kentucky’s Economy

Wear a mask. Wash your hands. Stay home if you are sick. We have all become familiar with the CDC guidelines on staying safe during this unprecedented time. But what if you are at risk of losing your home because you are unable to pay your rent or mortgage? This is the challenge that approximately 288,000 or 10% of Kentucky households have faced throughout the past year.

Kentucky's Economic Recovery, Ashli Watts, Michael W. Clark

Kentucky Economic Update

Highlights of this first release of “Kentucky Economic Update” include:

• Kentucky’s GDP bounced back during the 3rd quarter of 2020 but was still below pre-pandemic levels.
• While employment was still down 5.2% in December compared to a year ago, Kentucky has recovered 65% of jobs lost during initial months of the pandemic.
• As of December 2020, Kentucky’s unemployment rate stood at 6%, down from 16.6% in April 2020.
• Kentucky’s labor participation rate, which was 59.6% just before the pandemic dropped to 57.5% in December 2020.

Kentucky Annual Economic Report 2021, Michael W. Clark, James P. Ziliak, Simon Sheather

Kentucky Annual Economic Report

This report is one of the important ways that the Center for Business and Economic Research fulfills its mission to examine various aspects of Kentucky’s economy as directed by the Kentucky Revised Statutes (KRS 164.738). The analysis and data presented here cover a variety of topics that range from a discussion of Kentucky’s current economic climate to a broad presentation of factors affecting the economy.

The report covers numerous dimensions of Kentucky’s economy and COVID-19’s effects are evident across many of these dimensions. The pandemic brought the longest running economic expansion to an abrupt end. By April, Kentucky’s employment declined …

The Socioeconomics Of Homelessness In Bowling Green, Kentucky, Ben Hanson

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Though the city of Bowling Green, Kentucky has experienced tremendous economic growth in recent years, poverty and homelessness have become a problem for residents and city officials. This project seeks to expand research on homelessness in Bowling Green, Kentucky in order to prescribe policies that could be enacted by local government entities. Construction of low-income housing, rent subsidies, rent ceilings, and tougher eviction laws are all policy measures that have been discussed by previous literature. To analyze the effectiveness of these four policies, this project proposes a regression model that explores the relationship between the homeless population and each of …

Some Regional Economic Perspectives On Covid-19 Impacts, Paul A. Coomes

Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise Working Papers

It has been about eight months since the Covid-19 pandemic began sweeping across America, causing the well-known health care emergency, and major economic and fiscal distortions. Presumably, we are in the last stages of the damage, as activity has picked up in most realms of daily life. However, recovery problems linger in many areas, including air travel, cruises, hotels, conventions, concerts, and schools. While not over, enough information has emerged to start documenting the regional economic impacts around Kentucky. This note examines the latest public data to study the apparent economic and fiscal damage related to Covid responses, public and …

Measuring The Spread Of Covid-19 In Kentucky: Do We Have The Right Data?, Kenneth R. Troske, Paul A. Coomes

Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise Working Papers

We examine various measures of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths, with an emphasis on data for Kentucky. We find that: Data on the number of new reported cases of the disease obtained from convenience samples (as opposed to representative random samples) is an inaccurate measure of the spread of the disease in the State. Using CDC data and national studies, it appears that there were ten times the number of infections in March than reported for Kentucky at the time and by September the State is still capturing only one out of two people infected.

A better measure of new …

Kentucky Public Schools As Educational Bright Spots (September 2020), Michael T. Childress

CBER Research Report

Understanding the reasons for better‐than‐expected performance across Kentucky's 173 school districts, taking into account student outcomes, backgrounds, and school district characteristics. Building on the previous work with school districts and using school-level data, this paper discusses the estimated expected level of school-level performance using district-level fixed effects. From this broad range of student outcomes, family and community backgrounds, and school characteristics, we identify schools that have performed better than expected—which we refer to as “bright spots.”

Did Social-Distancing Measures In Kentucky Help To Flatten The Covid-19 Curve?, Charles J. Courtemanche, Joseph Garuccio, Anh Le, Joshua C. Pinkston, Aaron Yelowitz

Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise Working Papers

In the absence of a vaccine or more effective treatment options, containing the spread of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) must rely on non-pharmaceutical interventions. All U.S. states adopted social-distancing measures in March and April of 2020, though they varied in both timing and scope. Kentucky began by closing public schools and restaurant dining rooms on March 16th before progressing to closing other non-essential businesses and eventually issuing a “Healthy at Home” order with restrictions similar to the shelter-in-place (SIPO) orders adopted by other states. We aim to quantify the impact of these measures on COVID-19 case growth in the …

Kentucky Annual Economic Report 2020, Michael W. Clark, William H. Hoyt, Simon Sheather, Michael T. Childress

Kentucky Annual Economic Report

This report is one of the important ways that the Center for Business and Economic Research fulfills its mission to examine various aspects of the Kentucky economy. The analysis and data presented here cover a variety of topics that range from an economic forecast for Kentucky in 2020 to a broad presentation of factors affecting the economy.

The Effects Of Opioids On Kentucky's Workforce, Michael W. Clark, Jenny A. Minier, Charles J. Courtemanche, Bethany L. Paris, Michael T. Childress

CBER Research Report

From the executive summary:

Opioid abuse represents a significant and growing public health issue for both the nation and Kentucky. In 2016, opioids contributed to more than 62,000 deaths nationally and 1,406 deaths in Kentucky. National studies have placed the societal costs of opioid abuse at $55.7 billion in 2007 and $78.5 billion in 2013 (Birbaum et al. (2011) and Florence et al. (2016)). These costs included increased health care expenditures, higher criminal justice costs, and lost earnings due to reduced employment and premature deaths. The While House Council of Economic Advisors (2017) estimated the societal costs of opioid abuse …

The Effect Of Smoking On Kentucky’S Workforce, Michael W. Clark, Jenny A. Minier, Charles J. Courtemanche, Bethany L. Paris, Michael T. Childress

CBER Research Report

Excerpt from the Executive Summary:

Smoking has been estimated to increase health care costs in the United States by $167.5 billion annually (Xu et al. 2015). In Kentucky, smoking adds $2.5 billion in health care expenditures each year. Most of these costs were paid by public programs such as Medicaid and Medicare. While these costs are significant, they represent only a portion of the costs that smoking imposes on society. Smoking also leads to poorer labor market outcomes. Smokers are more likely to be unemployed, earn lower wages, and die prematurely than non-smokers. These negative labor market effects reduce economic …

Comparative Spending Of Medicaid Dollars On Child Participants Of Kentucky’S Sobriety Treatment And Recovery Teams Program Versus A Matched Comparison Group., Matthew Thomas Walton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Child protective services agencies have long observed the complicating role that parental substance use and addiction plays in cases of child maltreatment. Families who struggle with these problems present unique challenges for child welfare professionals. These families are typically more difficult to engage, more likely to have children removed from the home, and have poorer outcomes when compared to other families. These poorer outcomes often include health problems. Addiction has well-known effects on health, and the specific manifestations of these problems for parents have been documented for years in child protection casework. However, what has been less investigated are the …

The Economic Impact Of Diabetes In Kentucky, Michael W. Clark, Jenny A. Minier, Charles J. Courtemanche, Bethany L. Paris, Michael T. Childress

CBER Research Report

Excerpt from the Executive Summary:

The Kentucky Department of Public Health is responsible for improving the health and safety of Kentucky’s residents by preventing disease and injuries and encouraging healthy lifestyles. The department administers nearly 150 programs that address critical health issues affecting Kentuckians. These programs screen newborns for health problems, prevent the spread of infectious diseases, promote oral health, and provide numerous other services.

Diabetes represents a growing health concern for the nation and Kentucky. It is a chronic condition that causes blood sugar levels to rise and contributes to other serious health conditions such as heart and kidney …

Kentucky Annual Economic Report 2019, Michael T. Childress, Jenny Minier, William H. Hoyt, Simon Sheather

Kentucky Annual Economic Report

This report is one of the important ways that the Center for Business and Economic Research fulfills its mission as specified in the Kentucky Revised Statutes (KRS 164.738) to examine various aspects of the Kentucky economy. The analysis and data presented here cover a variety of topics that range from an economic forecast for Kentucky in 2019 to a broad presentation of factors affecting the economy.

Utilizing Large Scale Datasets To Evaluate Aspects Of A Sustainable Bioeconomy, Gwanseon Kim

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

This dissertation combines large scale datasets to evaluate crop prediction, land values, and consumption of a crop being considered to advance a sustainable bioeconomy. In chapter 2, we propose a novel application of the multinomial logit (MNL) model to estimate the conditional transition probabilities of crop choice for the state of Kentucky. Utilizing the recovered transition probabilities the forecast distributions of total acreages for alfalfa, corn, soybeans, tobacco, and wheat produced in the state from 2010 to 2015 can be recovered. The Cropland Data Layer is merged with the Common Land Unit dataset to allow for the identification of crop …

Effects Of Shifts In The Local Tax Base On Economic Outlook, Shelby Buckman

Posters-at-the-Capitol Presentations

In Kentucky, local governments can impose taxes on property and income. Tax options and maximum rates are limited by the classification of the city, which is loosely based on population size. In the summer of 2017, the City of Henderson, Kentucky’s City Council passed an ordinance that lowered real estate tax rates and raised the occupational payroll tax rates. This shift is forecasted to be net neutral for city revenue, which raised the question of how changes in the local tax burden affect a Kentucky city’s long run economic outlook.

In a theoretical model, the businesses and population would move …

Industrial Resources - Bowling Green, Kentucky (Sc 3240), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3240. “Industrial Survey of Bowling Green and Warren County, Ky.,” prepared by the Chamber of Commerce, 1938. The report includes, but is not limited to, information about population, transportation, utilities, businesses, agriculture, local government and services, schools, recreation, retail statistics, and climate.

Municipal Responses To The Shifting Environment Of Shopping Mall Retail, Paul Kleier Iii

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Economic development is a vital local government responsibility because it guides the provision of jobs for residents, markets for the purchase of goods, and revenue for the government itself. Shopping malls have been key drivers of local economic activity for decades, but their viability going forward has become uncertain since the turn of the century. This paper considers both reasons for this uncertainty and strategies that have been or can be implemented to improve mall sustainability and profitability. While literature addressing this topic focuses almost exclusively on the role played by mall management, this paper places special emphasis on the …

Kentucky Annual Economic Report 2018, Christopher R. Bollinger, William H. Hoyt, David Blackwell, Michael T. Childress

Kentucky Annual Economic Report

This report is one of the important ways that the Center for Business and Economic Research fulfills its mission as specified in the Kentucky Revised Statutes (KRS 164.738) to examine various aspects of the Kentucky economy. The analysis and data presented here cover a variety of topics that range from an economic forecast for Kentucky in 2018 to a broad presentation of factors affecting the economy.

Single Bidders And Tacit Collusion In Highway Procurement Auctions, David R. Barrus, Frank A. Scott Jr.

Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise Working Papers

Collusion in auctions can take different forms, one of which is refraining from bidding. Such behavior may be overt or tacit.Certain aspects of highway procurement auctions facilitate collusive outcomes. We collect data on asphalt paving auctions conducted by the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet from 2005 to 2007. We analyze both the bid participation decision and the pricing decision. We include variables that affect firm’s’ costs as well as variables that capture competitive and strategic effects. Most importantly, we determine the potential service area of each asphalt plant and use that information to determine the potential bidders for each paving project. We …

The Economic Impacts Of Land Use Policies In Lexington, Kentucky, Christopher R. Bollinger, William H. Hoyt, Michael W. Clark, Xiaozhou Ding

CBER Research Report

Every five years, Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government’s Planning Commission adopts a comprehensive plan detailing goals and objectives that guide the city’s land use planning. Maintaining the city’s urban service area and preserving its rural and agricultural areas are integral parts of this plan. Within the urban service area, land is zoned to permit various types of urban uses such as residential, commercial, and industrial use. Land outside the urban service area is subject to several land use policies designed to preserve the rural characteristics of these areas. This report examines the effects of Lexington’s land use policies and specifically its …