Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Driving Qi With Research: Findings From Public Health Pbrns, Glen P. Mays

Health Management and Policy Presentations

Public health agencies are increasingly experimenting with quality improvement (QI) strategies designed to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of their efforts. Does QI work in public health, and if so for whom and under what circumstances? What QI strategies work best for which types of public health process failures, and at what cost? Research underway through the Public Health Practice-Based Research Networks (PBRN) Program is examining these types of questions to build an evidence base for public health QI.

The Science Of Public Health Delivery: Evidence, Uncertainties & Research Needs, Glen P. Mays

Health Management and Policy Presentations

Policy initiatives to reform the nation's health system increasingly recognize the need to incorporate public health and prevention strategies. The nation's delivery system for public health, however, varies widely across states and communities in its structure, authority, and capabilities. This session examines research from the growing field of public health services and systems research to identify directions for improving public health delivery.

Estimating The Value Of Public Health Services & Systems: Evidence, Uncertainties, And Research Needs, Glen P. Mays

Health Management and Policy Presentations

The Affordable Care Act authorized the largest expansion in federal funding for public health services and delivery systems in decades. These provisions, designed to support programs and services that promote health and prevent disease and injury on a population-wide basis, remain controversial because of uncertainties regarding their effectiveness in improving health and constraining medical cost growth. This session examines a series of recent studies to shed light on the health and economic value of spending on public health.

Disparities Research In Public Health Pbrns, Glen P. Mays

Health Management and Policy Presentations

Public health agencies are well positioned within the health system to play key roles in addressing oral health issues on a population-wide basis, However, current evidence reveals wide geographic variation in the delivery of public health interventions for oral health promotion. This session explores the factors contributing to this variation, and it highlights studies underway through the Public Health Practice-Based Research Networks (PBRNs) to produce more and better evidence about public health delivery and impact.

Intrastate Switched Telephone Access Charges In Kentucky, Christopher Jepsen, Frank Scott, Jesse Zenthoefer

CBER Research Report

Excerpt from the executive summary:

This report examines the economic consequences of the current access rate system for intrastate long-distance calls, governed by the Kentucky Public Service Commission. At the time Kentucky created an access rate system for telephone service in 1984, the main goal of telecommunication policy was universal wireline access. Since then the telecommunications landscape has changed dramatically, as well as current policy goals. New forms of communication and policy have emerged such as cellular phones and cable telephony, as well as the introduction of the National Broadband Plan and the strong desire both nationally and in Kentucky …

The Relationship Between Electricity Prices And Electricity Demand, Economic Growth, And Employment, John Garen, Christopher Jepsen, James Saunoris

CBER Research Report

There is growing concern over the emissions of greenhouse gases in the United States. Policymakers at both the state and national levels have discussed, and in some cases enacted, policies with the goals of reducing energy demand and encouraging the use of more efficient energy technologies. Because these policies will have an effect on the cost of energy, a quantitative examination of the energy demand is warranted.

In this project, we estimate the likely effects of increased electricity prices on the demand for electricity, production as measured by Gross State Product (GSP), and employment.

Health & Wellness In The Business Context, Michael T. Childress

Issue Brief on Topics Affecting Kentucky’s Economy

No abstract provided.

The Importance Of Region And State Welfare Rules For Disconnected Single Mothers, Andrea Hetling

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

The proportion of low-income, single mothers not receiving public assistance or participating in the formal employment sector has approximately doubled over the past decade. Many of the currently debated policy options to support these families focus on state level programs. However, little is known about the relationships between state welfare program characteristics and disconnectedness. This project assesses the effect of state welfare rules on the likelihood of being disconnected from these two income sources. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and the Urban Institute‟s Welfare Rules Database, the current research compares the circumstances of these at-risk …

Recent Developments In Antipoverty Policies In The United States, James P. Ziliak

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

I survey recent developments in antipoverty policy in the United States over the past decade and examine how the safety net and tax system affects poverty and its correlates using data from the 2000 to 2010 waves of the Current Population Survey-Annual Social and Economic Supplement. Unlike the 1980s and 1990s, and until the health care overhaul in 2009, the first decade of the 21st Century was relatively tepid in terms of major transfer policy reforms. However, real spending on most major social program increased significantly, and in some cases doubled or tripled, in response to demographic shifts and the …

Kentucky Ranks 33rd On Education Index, Michael T. Childress, Matthew L. Howell

Issue Brief on Topics Affecting Kentucky’s Economy

No abstract provided.

Earnings Volatility In America: Evidence From Matched Cps, James P. Ziliak, Bradley Hardy, Christopher Bollinger

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

We offer new evidence on earnings volatility of men and women in the United States over the past four decades by using matched data from the March Current Population Survey. We construct a measure of total volatility that encompasses both permanent and transitory instability, and that admits employment transitions and losses from self employment. We also present a detailed decomposition of earnings volatility to account for changing shares in employment probabilities, conditional variances of continuous workers, and conditional mean variances from labor-force entry and exit. Our results show that earnings volatility among men increased by 15 percent from the early …

A Tale Of Two Cities? The Heterogeneous Impact Of Medicaid Managed Care In Kentucky, James Marton, Aaron Yelowitz, Jeffery C. Talbert

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Does managed care produce lower health care utilization and costs through better aligned financial incentives and alternative delivery methods (the “pure” HMO effect) or by attracting more healthy enrollees (enrollee selection)? The purpose of this paper is to shed new light on this fundamental question using a quasi-experimental approach that exploits the timing and county specific implementation of Medicaid managed care plans in two distinct sub-sets of Kentucky counties in the late 1990s. We find large differences in the relative success of each region in reducing utilization that are likely driven by important differences in plan design. Asthmatic children enrolled …

If You Don’T Build It... Mexican Mobility Following The U.S. Housing Bust, Brian C. Cadena, Brian K. Kovak

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

This paper demonstrates the importance of earnings-sensitive migration in response to local variation in labor demand. We use geographic variation in the depth of the housing bust to examine its effects on the migration of natives and Mexican-born individuals in the U.S. We find a strong effect of the housing bust on the location choices of Mexicans, with movement of Mexican population away from U.S. states facing the largest declines in construction and movement toward U.S. states facing smaller declines. This effect operated primarily through interstate migration of Mexicans previously residing in the U.S. and, to a lesser extent, through …

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 …

Cross-Border Shopping: Implications For State Fiscal Competition In Multiple Tax Instruments, Kusum Singh

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation investigates whether consumers’ cross-border shopping due to interstate commodity tax differentials influence counties’ economic activity and states’ strategic competition in multiple tax policies.

First, I examine how own and the nearest neighboring states’ commodity tax rates affect counties’ retail activity. Particularly, in contrast to many previous studies, I examine whether the distance to the state border influences the responsiveness of counties’ retail activity to sales and excise taxes of own and the nearest neighboring states. Since the costs of avoiding state commodity taxes are presumably lower along borders, the impacts of state commodity taxes on retail activity may …

Firm Bidding Behavior In Highway Procurement Auctions: An Analysis Of Single-Bid Contracts, Tacit Collusion, And The Financial Impact On Kentucky, David R. Barrus

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Recently, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) indicated lack of competition and single-bid contracts in asphalt paving as a major issue facing state transportation departments. Single-bid contracts indicate a lack of competition which increases costs to state and local governments. During the period from 2005-2007 in Kentucky, 42 percent of all bids were awarded with only one firm bidding on the project. Of the asphalt paving jobs, 63 percent of those jobs were awarded to a single bidder.

The analysis of this dissertation focuses on detecting tacit collusion in asphalt paving jobs in Kentucky. A focal …

Kentucky Annual Economic Report 2011, Kenneth R. Troske, Devanathan Sudharshan, Michael T. Childress

Kentucky Annual Economic Report

No abstract provided.

Analysis Of Two-Year Colleges: Transfer, Retention And Graduation, Darshak P. Patel

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Investment in higher education is typically considered as a static discrete-choice problem where students make post-secondary education choices usually right after high school (Heckman et al., 2006). This is largely aligned with Becker’s human capital theory. As Becker’s theory holds, students’ decisions can alter with the arrival of new information (Weisbrod, 1964). By relaxing the assumption certainty in the human capital model, student education decisions can be modeled using Weisbrod’s option value theory. According to this theory, students reevaluate their lifetime-utility maximizing decisions based on new information acquired in a sequential nature. Students face large uncertainties due to unexpected positive …

Mississippi Period Occupational And Political History Of The Middle Savannah River Valley, Keith Stephenson

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Research focusing on the political economy of Mississippian mound centers in the middle Savannah River valley has prompted a reevaluation of current interpretations regarding societal complexity. I conclude the clearest expression of classic Mississippian riverine-adaptation is evident at centers immediately below the Fall Line with their political ties to chiefdom centers in the Piedmont, and especially Etowah. By contrast, those centers on the interior Coastal Plain were politically autonomous with minimal signatures in social ranking. The scale of appropriated labor and resulting level of surplus production, necessitated by upland settlement on the Aiken Plateau, fostered social contradictions making communally-oriented and …

Essays On Income Volatility And Individual Well-Being, Bradley L. Hardy

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation consists of three essays in which I document trends in earnings and income volatility, estimate potential causal mechanisms for changing volatility, and examine the long-term consequences of parental income volatility for children. In essay 2 I document trends in earnings and income volatility of individuals and families using matched data in the March Current Population survey from 1973 to 2009. Essay 3 advances the literature on volatility, using matched data from the CPS to identify demographic and labor market correlates of earnings volatility within education-birth year cohorts. This study collapses the cross-sectional CPS into a pseudo-panel and then …

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 …

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 …

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 …