Economics 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 Religious Roots Of Modern Economics: Historical Origins And Contemporary Consequences, Benjamin M. Friedman

Clemens Lecture Series

No abstract provided.

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 …

Book Review: "Buying Respectability: Philanthropy And Urban Society In Transnational Perspective, 1840s To 1930s", Stuart Mendel

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

Book Review: "Buying Respectability: Philanthropy and Urban Society in Transnational Perspective, 1840s to 1930s, by Thomas Adam 2009"

Northwest Indiana Entrepreneurial Opportunity Survey Analysis, Ziona Austrian, Merissa Piazza, Eli Auerbach, Sunjoo Park

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

This survey report is associated with "Northwest Indiana Regional Analysis: Demographics, Economy, entrepreneurship and Innovation"

Revitalizing Distressed Older Suburbs, Kathryn W. Hexter, Edward W. Hill, Brian A. Mikelbank, Benjamin Y. Clark, Charles Post

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

No abstract provided.

Economic Development Analysis & Action Plan: Camden, Maine, Charles S. Colgan

Regional Studies

This report addresses the issues of economic growth in the context of the Town of Camden, one of the 20 communities examined in the Gateway 1 planning process. The intention of this Commercial Development Inventory and Economic Development Analysis is to guide the Economic Development efforts of Camden for the next 5-10 years within the context of the Gateway 1 initiative.

Courting Toyota, Selling Kentucky: Conflict And Relationship Building In The Establishment Of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Of Kentucky, 1984-1989, Eric Shea Bailey

Online Theses and Dissertations

This study is an examination of the social, economic, and governmental factors that surrounded the establishment of Toyota Motor Corporation's first wholly owned automobile plant in the United States. After a lengthy negotiation with several states, the plant was built in Scott County, Kentucky, near the city of Georgetown. The collected and archived correspondence of Governor Martha Layne Collins as well as contemporary media accounts and interviews with Governor Collins, Larry Hayes, Jiro Hashimoto, and Bill Londrigan served as the evidentiary basis for the research for this thesis. Previous interpretations have regarded the establishment of the factory as both a …

Technical, Allocative And Economic Efficiencies In Sugarcane Production In Pakistan: A Non-Parametric Approach, Heman D. Lohano, Adnan Nazir, Ali M. Khushk

Business Review

The objective of this paper is to measure the technical, allocative and economic efficiencies of sugarcane farms in Pakistan. These efficiencies are measured by data envelopment analysis method using the farm level data collected from 333 sugarcane growers of Pakistan in 2008. The results show that the average technical efficiency of the sugarcane farms is 75 percent, the average allocative efficiency is 83 percent, and the average cost efficiency is 62 percent. The results indicate that the sugarcane farms of Pakistan can reduce the costs of production by 38 percent to produce the same level of output by using the …

Are Estimates Of The Value Of A Statistical Life Exaggerated?, Chris Doucouliagos, T D Stanley, Margaret J. Giles

Research outputs 2011

The magnitude of the value of astatisticallife (VSL) is critical to the evaluation of many health and safety initiatives. To date, the large and rigorous VSL research literature has not explicitly accommodated publication selectivity bias (i.e., the reduced probability that insignificant or negative VSL values are reported). This study demonstrates that doing so is essential. For studies that employ hedonic wage equations to estimate VSL, correction for selection bias reduces the average value of astatisticallife by 70–80%. Our meta-regression analysis also identifies several sources for the wide heterogeneity found among reported VSL estimates.

Bank Risk: Does Size Matter?, David Allen, Akhmad R. Kramadibrata, Robert Powell, Abhay K. Singh

Research outputs 2011

The size of banks is examined as a determinant of bank risk. A wide range of banks are examined across four regions, including Australia, Canada, Europe and the USA. Four risk metrics are considered including Value at Risk (VaR), Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR, which measures risk beyond VaR), Probability of Default (PD) using Merton structural methodology, and Conditional Probability of Default (CPD, the author’s own model which measures risk based on extreme asset value fluctuations. Daily equity and asset value fluctuations are included in the analysis, including pre-GFC and GFC periods. In addition to examining size in isolation as …

Carbon Sequestration And Permit Trading On The Competitive Fringe, Arthur J. Caplan

Applied Economics Faculty Publications

This paper makes two contributions to the carbon-sequestration literature. The first is the development of a theoretical framework in which sequestration and permit trading are analyzed jointly in the context of a competitive fringe model. The second is a numerical analysis demonstrating the role market structure, or market power, might play in the determination of an equilibrium sequestration allocation and carbon price. We present three comparative-static cases, the first two of which assess the impact of relative changes in the cost structures of the dominant firm and competitive fringe. For these two cases we find that the equilibrium allocation of …

Foreign Direct Investment, Non-Traded Goods And Real Wages, Reza Oladi, John Gilbert, H. Beladi

Applied Economics Faculty Publications

Using a three‐sector general equilibrium model with non‐traded goods, we investigate the impact of foreign direct investment on the real wages of skilled and unskilled workers. We show that foreign direct investment increases the real wages of skilled and unskilled workers alike, but widens the gap between the two under plausible conditions.

Decrease Of Youth Participation In The Labor Market In The Palestinian Territories: Reasons And Determinants From Gender Prospects [Arabic], Ayman Abdul Majeed

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

It is widely acknowledged that Palestinian youths between the ages of 15–29 have a low participation rate in the labor force. Population Council research has shown that this age group faces many barriers and challenges that make it difficult to pursue work. The prevailing political, economic, social, cultural, and educational conditions are major contributors to the low work participation, in addition to a decreased sense of self-confidence and low self-esteem. The conclusions from the research were to propose practical solutions to help this generation to regain self-confidence and self-esteem and become more active participants in the labor force. There is …

Matching Grants, Income Redistribution And Decentralized Leadership, Arthur J. Caplan, C. Emilson, D. Silva

Applied Economics Faculty Publications

We examine the decentralized provision of an impure public good by regional governments in a federation similar in certain respects to both the European Union and the United States. The central authority redistributes income and provides matching grants on a per rate basis after it observes the regions’ contributions to the impure public good. Imperfectly mobile workers react to regional and central governments’ policies by establishing residence in their most preferred region. Despite imperfect labor mobility, we show that the allocation of the impure public good and the interregional income redistribution policy are generally efficient in a federation with decentralized …

Perceptions And Their Role In Consumer Decision-Making, Raman Khaddaria

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an empirical investigation into the roles that different quantifiable and measurable perceptions play in defining individual behavior across a variety of decision-making contexts. In particular, the focus lies on smokers and the choices they make with regard to smoking and beyond. Chapter 1 analyzes a nationally representative sample of adults (23 years and older) in the United States, pertaining to the Annenberg Perception of Tobacco Risk Survey II (1999-2000). It is observed that three dimensions to smoking behavior viz., risk, temporality and addiction, interact to determine the smoking status of an individual. Although previous studies mostly looked …

Seeking For The Lost: A Papyrological Search For Luke Fifteen's Lost Economics, Erik Yingling

Student Works

This paper draws upon Egyptian documentary papyri in order to show more fully the quantitative purchasing power of items of economic significance in Luke 15. Specifically, the stories of the lost drachma, lost sheep, and prodigal son each mention economic items which—when compared with the papyrological data—can more fully elucidate areas of economic import which have not been looked at before. In doing so, the article builds upon, and supports, the framework of Roman economic "middling groups" as posited by Longenecker (2009). Furthermore, a close look at Luke 15 when compared with the Egyptian papyrological data suggests the possibility of …

Instrumental Variable Estimation Of A Spatial Autoregressive Panel Model With Random Effects, Badi H. Baltagi, Long Liu

Center for Policy Research

This paper extends the instrumental variable estimators of Kelejian and Prucha (1998) and Lee (2003) proposed for the cross-sectional spatial autoregressive model to the random effects spatial autoregressive panel data model. It also suggests an extension of the Baltagi (1981) error component 2SLS estimator to this spatial panel model.

Rethinking The Time Allocation Of Egyptian Females: A Matching Analysis, Rana Hardy

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

This study explores the extremely biased division of labor within Egyptian households. The effects of marriage on women’s market and domestic labor supplies are important aspects of this study conducted by the Population Council for its working paper series on gender and work in the Mideast-North Africa region. New explanations for married women’s low participation rates are proposed. A matching model is estimated to determine how selection into marriage alters the time allocation of women. The empirical results show that marriage significantly affects both types of work with married women spending about eight hours less on market work weekly relative …

Assessing Post-Ada Employment: Some Econometric Evidence And Policy Considerations, Christopher L. Griffin Jr., John J. Donohue Iii, Michael Ashley Stein, Sascha Becker

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the relationship between the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) and the relative labor market outcomes for people with disabilities. Using individual-level longitudinal data from 1981 to 1996 derived from the previously unexploited Panel Study of Income Dynamics (“PSID”), we examine the possible effect of the ADA on (1) annual weeks worked; (2) annual earnings; and (3) hourly wages for a sample of 7120 unique male household heads between the ages of 21 and 65 as well as a subset of 1437 individuals appearing every year from 1981 to 1996. Our analysis of the larger sample suggests the …