Economics Commons^™

Chain Restaurant Calorie Posting Laws, Obesity, And Consumer Welfare, Charles J. Courtemanche, David Frisvold, David Jimenez-Gomez, Mariétou H. Ouayogodé, Michael Price

Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise Working Papers

The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) introduced a mandate requiring chain restaurants to post calorie counts on menus and menu boards. This paper investigates whether and why calorie posting laws work. To do so, we develop a model of calories consumed that highlights two potential channels through which mandates influence choice and outlines an empirical strategy to disentangle these alternatives. We test the predictions of our model using data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to compare changes in body mass index (BMI), obesity, and consumer well-being in locations that implemented calorie-posting laws between 2008 and …

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.

Reviewer Acknowledgments For 2019, F. Douglas Scutchfield Md, Erin N. Haynes, Erin Bouldin, Robert M. Shapiro Ii, Tim Marema, Charlotte S. Seidman

Journal of Appalachian Health

The Editorial Team extends a heart-felt “thank you” to those who have given their time and expertise in the past year to participate in this process with the Journal of Appalachian Health. We know that you have many competing pressures on your time, and that you are not financially compensated for the time you spend reviewing manuscripts. We hope that there are other forms of compensation that make the sacrifice worth the effort.

A Healthy Attitude: Rural Leaders In Tn County Organize To Address Well-Being In Appalachia, Tim Marema, Erin Bouldin

Journal of Appalachian Health

When it came to formal philanthropy, Grundy County was not on the map. That changed with the 2012 establishment of South Cumberland Community Fund, which serves the plateau portions of Grundy, Franklin, and Marion counties.

Development And Early Outcomes Of The Watauga Compassionate Community Initiative, North Carolina, Tim Marema, Erin Bouldin

Journal of Appalachian Health

Addressing adverse childhood experiences has become a public health imperative, and communities across the United States are working to develop and implement programs and policies to both prevent childhood trauma and support adults who experienced trauma as children. Here we describe the development of the Watauga Compassionate Community Initiative (WCCI) in Watauga, County, North Carolina.

Introduction To The New “Early Reports Of Innovation” Section, Erin Bouldin, Tim Marema

Journal of Appalachian Health

The Journal of Appalachian Health is introducing a new section this issue. While the journal is centralizing some of the best research and commentary on Appalachian health, the editorial team felt that practice-focused groups, organizations, and agencies may not be fully represented in the publication.

Introducing The L.A.U.N.C.H. Collaborative, F. Douglas Scutchfield Md, Kevin Patrick

Journal of Appalachian Health

The L.A.U.N.C.H. Collaborative: Linking & Amplifying User-Centered Networks through Connected Health: A Demonstration of Broadband-Enabled Connected Health and Community-Based Co-Design brings together a group of organizations that are eager to use Appalachian Kentucky as a site for the development of a project aimed at creating an environment that addresses two of the nation’s major concerns about cancer. First, individuals who live in rural and remote areas are more likely to die of cancer than those who live in urban or suburban settings. And second, geographic obstacles hinder their ability to access evidence-based strategies that can prevent cancer or treat it …

50 Economic Facts And Figures About Kentucky, 2020, Michael Childress

CBER Infographic Posters

50 ECONOMIC FACTS AND FIGURES ABOUT KENTUCKY, 2020

From Hobbes To Habermas: The Anti-Cultural Turn In Western Political Thought, Ralph Gert Schoellhammer

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

The theme of this dissertation is the anti-cultural turn of Western Political Thought that has emerged out of Enlightenment thinking and was first turned into a comprehensive political idea by Thomas Hobbes.

Beginning with an overview of psychological research into the phenomenon of culture I put forward the argument that human beings are by nature social and individualistic, but that they oscillate between their ability to put group-interests before individual interests and vice versa. Culture is the main mechanism that influences which interest we give priority. This mechanism work through emotional attachments that create intuitions about what is morally right …

Three Perspectives On Innovation In European Agriculture: From Public Research To The Circular Economy, Michele Vollaro

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

The dissertation examines the idea that current and future challenges faced by the European agricultural sector call for a multidimensional approach combining the classical path of productivity growth with more stringent commitments to environmental protection, and more incisive mitigation and adaptation actions to mitigate climate change, all within a policy context of a transition toward the cyclical management of resources (inputs, outputs and wastes) inspired by the circular economy concept. The three essays of the dissertation aim to show: that agricultural productivity in Europe is supported by complementarities between public and private investments in agricultural research with remarkable results in …

The Coffee In Your Cup: Reviewing Fair Trade’S Impact On Development, Elena Liu

Oswald Research and Creativity Competition

Fair trade is one of many certification strategies available to coffee producers around the globe. The fair trade (FT) movement broke into the American coffee industry with strategies aimed at reducing global poverty among farmers in developing nations, primarily using the FMP and FP mechanisms. This review will discuss why research on the development effects of fair trade is increasingly nebulous, how researchers have analyzed it up until now, their findings, and future recommendations to improve the clarity of results. Current literature on fair trade’s impact provides consistent reports of higher prices attained, but inconclusive findings surrounding increased income and …

Antitrust Implications For Mergers Involving Maverick Firms, Alexander Mcglothlin

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

Maverick firms are defined in the Horizontal Merger Guidelines as those firms that may exert a disproportional competitive effect in markets where they compete. The Guidelines mandate that mergers and acquisitions involving maverick firms be given special consideration by the Agencies, however not much is known about maverick firms or their competitive effects when they are acquired. The Guidelines describe characteristics that may be present in a maverick firm, but stop short of providing a discrete test that may be used for their identification. They are often small firms whose acquisitions do not warrant reporting to the Agencies due to …

Time Spent Exercising And Obesity: An Application Of Lewbel’S Instrumental Variables Method, Charles J. Courtemanche, Joshua C. Pinkston, Jay Stewart

Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise Working Papers

This paper examines the role physical activity plays in determining body mass using data from the American Time Use Survey. Our work is the first to address the measurement error that arises when time use during a single day—rather than average daily time use over an extended period—is used as an explanatory variable. We show that failing to account for day-to-day variation in activities results in the effects of time use on a typical day being understated. Furthermore, we account for the possibility that physical activity and body mass are jointly determined by implementing Lewbel’s instrumental variables estimator that exploits …

Evidence-Based Approach To Drug Crisis, Jiebing Wen

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

I am devoted to health policy research, especially tackling the opioid crisis, and evaluating marijuana laws and newly emerging issues associated with legal recreational drugs. Opioid overdose in the United States continues to jeopardize public health. Meanwhile, the majority of states have legalized medical marijuana and one third of them further liberalized recreational marijuana. Marijuana liberalization, although originally independent of the growing opioid crisis, may be a harm reduction approach to the crisis because marijuana may be a substitute for opioids in pain management at a relatively lower risk. However, marijuana liberalization may also lead to marijuana-related harms, such as …

The Effects Of E-Cigarette Taxes On E-Cigarette Prices And Tobacco Product Sales: Evidence From Retail Panel Data, Chad Cotti, Charles J. Courtemanche, Joanna Catherine Maclean, Erik Nesson, Michael F. Pesko, Nathan Tefft

Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise Working Papers

We explore the effect of e-cigarette taxes enacted through 2017 in eight states and two large counties on e-cigarette prices, e-cigarette sales, and sales of other tobacco products. We use the Nielsen Retail Scanner data for the years 2011 to 2017, comprising approximately 35,000 retailers nationally. We calculate a Herfindahl–Hirschman Index of 0.251 for retail-based purchases of e-cigarettes, indicating high market concentration. We estimate a tax-to-price pass-through of 1.55 (p < 0.01) and an e-cigarette own-price elasticity of -2.6 (p < 0.01) for the average e-cigarette tax. We also estimate a positive cross-price elasticity of demand for e-cigarettes and traditional cigarettes of roughly 1.1 for the average tax, suggesting that e-cigarettes and traditional cigarettes are economic substitutes. Our results suggest that higher e-cigarette taxes would increase e-cigarette prices and reduce e-cigarette sales, with an unintended effect of increasing traditional cigarette sales. We simulate that for every one standard e-cigarette pod (a device that contains liquid nicotine in e-cigarettes) of 0.7 ml no longer purchased as a result of an e-cigarette tax, the same tax increases traditional cigarettes purchased by 6.2 extra packs.

Examining The Effects Of Public Policies And Addiction On Purchase Of Tobacco Products With Causal Inference And Machine Learning Methods, Xueting Deng

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

My three essays explore the effects of tobacco policies and addiction on the consumption of e-cigarettes and other tobacco products. Recently, jurisdictions imposed taxes and other regulations on e-cigarettes, with the hope to raise tax revenues and address health concerns regarding e-cigarette use, especially youth addiction. My first essay in Chapter 1 focuses on the effects of e-cigarette taxes on sales of e-cigarettes. It compares the two types of tax policies on sales of e-cigarettes, cigarettes, and smoking-cessation products. This comparison provides information for lawmakers on decisions of taxes regarding the perspectives of revenue generation and tobacco control. Second, after …

Three Essays On Trade, Environment, And Health, Sookti Chaudhary

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

My dissertation consists of three essays on trade, environment and health. The first essay empirically evaluates domestic facilities' environmental response to Chinese import competition in the United States (US) manufacturing sector from 2000 to 2010. Using facility-level data on chemical emissions and employing an instrumental variables approach, the paper finds that industry/regional exposure to increased import competition had very little impact on the environmental decisions of domestic facilities.

The second essay empirically explores a possible link between the environmental justice efforts during the Obama administration and the change in environmental inequity by examining the change in US facilities' underlying environmental …

Three Essays On Entry Barriers And Incentives In Labor Markets, Samuel Ingram

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

Occupational choice at the margin depends on both the incentives for entry and barriers to entry. The primary entry barrier determined by regulation is an occupational license. These are government laws determining the minimum qualifications to enter an occupation including education, testing, fees, and background checks. These regulations are currently enforced on 25% of the US labor market. The laws are crafted to protect consumers from unsafe goods and services but also have important consequences in labor market outcomes. The consequences may include fewer workers entering the profession, changes to which workers enter the profession, and altering competition, all of …

Three Essays On The Economics Of Education Expansion, Xiaozhou Ding

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

My dissertation consists of three essays that study the unintended consequences of education policies. The first two essays examine the impact of higher education expansion in China on household saving rate and individual migration rate. The third essay looks into the impact of a school redistricting plan and the construction a new school on housing prices in Fayette County, Kentucky.

In the first essay, I utilize the large national expansion on higher education in China which exogenously increase the enrollment of college students, to estimate the induced change in the expected college probability and how it affects saving rates for …

Home Rule, Local Autonomy, And Municipal Government Behavior, Xin Chen

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

This dissertation focuses on relationships between state and local governments. Of particular interest in this project is how the shift of power from the state to local governments changes local governments’ performance. This dissertation is comprised of four chapters. The first chapter briefly introduces the motivation and organization of the dissertation. The second chapter reviews the three state-imposed fiscal institutions—home rule, debt limitations, and tax and expenditure limitations, across states. While previous studies have looked at specific institutions, few studies have comprehensively reviewed the status of those institutions across states. This chapter attempts to fill this gap by comprehensively scrutinizing …

Trouble In The Tails? What We Know About Earnings Nonresponse 30 Years After Lillard, Smith, And Welch, Christopher R. Bollinger, Barry T. Hirsch, Charles M. Hokayem, James P. Ziliak

Economics Faculty Publications

Earnings nonresponse in household surveys is widespread, yet there is limited knowledge of how nonresponse biases earnings measures. We examine the consequences of nonresponse on earnings gaps and inequality using Current Population Survey individual records linked to administrative earnings data. The common assumption that earnings are missing at random is rejected. Nonresponse across the earnings distribution is U-shaped, highest in the left and right tails. Inequality measures differ between household and administrative data due in part to nonresponse. Nonresponse biases earnings differentials by race, gender, and education, particularly in the tails. Flexible copula-based models can account for nonrandom nonresponse.

A Virginia Mountain City Responds To The Challenge Of Improving Health Outcomes, Robert S. Cowell Jr.

Journal of Appalachian Health

In 2012, Roanoke Virginia was becoming a city of haves and have-nots, a place where many were benefitting from revitalization underway but too many were seeing their situation grow worse and becoming even more entrenched. Poverty with levels as high as 50% in some neighborhoods; life expectancy sometimes 14 years shorter than those living just one or two neighborhoods over; and lack of access to fresh food, medical care, and economic opportunities—all within view of the largest hospital in the region was unacceptable.

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Adult Food Security And The Relationship With Adverse Childhood Experiences Among Residents Of Appalachian North Carolina, Manan Roy, Erin Bouldin, Maggie Bennett, Adam Hege

Journal of Appalachian Health

Introduction: The Appalachian region has worse health outcomes than the remainder of the United States. These disparities are often linked to the underlying social and environmental determinants of health. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are associated with poor health outcomes across the lifespan and have a significant impact on future social determinants as an adult, including food security status.

Purpose: To explore the relationships between ACEs and food security among adults in the Appalachian counties of North Carolina and make comparisons with the rest of the state.

Methods: Researchers used North Carolina’s 2012 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data; namely, …

Roanoke's Collective Public Health Activities, Michael Lytton

Journal of Appalachian Health

Roanoke is addressing problems that confront many small and medium sized cities in the U.S., especially disparities in health and life expectancy between neighborhoods. These disparities are often legacies of decades of racial and economic segregation, resulting in low-income or disinvested communities. Typically, such neighborhoods have fewer parks, higher vacancy rates and less stable affordable housing stock, inadequate public transit systems, too few clinics, too many fast food restaurants and insufficient access to high quality schools. In Roanoke these are the northwest and southeast quadrants, both federally designated Medically Underserved Areas, and characterized by a large proportion of the city’s …

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 …

Can Mergers And Acquisitions Internalize Positive Externalities In Funding Innovation?, Leo Li, Mark Liu

Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise Working Papers

Fundamental innovation usually involves huge upfront costs, but the benefits are spread across various sectors of the economy. Given the large costs and limited appropriability of the benefits associated with the innovation, individual firms underinvest in these innovations relative to the socially optimal level. We find that mergers and acquisitions (M&As) can internalize the positive externalities by merging firms from both the user industries and the producer industries of an innovation. Using the US patent citation dataset, we define the user and producer relationship between each pair of industries and between each pair of industry and technological class. We then …

Kentucky School Districts As Educational Bright Spots, Michael T. Childress

CBER Research Report

Every year a select group of Kentucky school districts perform better than expected on measures of educational achievement. These measures include things like the percentage of elementary students who achieve proficiency or distinguished in reading, or the proportion of less‐advantaged middle school students who show a similar level of competency on the math assessment.

There are wide differences in the learning environments, finances, and student outcomes among and within Kentucky’s 173 school districts. This is not surprising given that the largest school district in the state, Jefferson County, has 97,000 students and 165 schools, while the smallest, West Point Independent …

A Legacy Of Disease, Arthur L. Frank

Journal of Appalachian Health

In Appalachia, like much of America, there are important health issues that have not always been appropriately predicted or dealt with when they occur. Lifestyle issues in Appalachia lead to obesity and heart disease, not surprisingly due to extensive use of sugary drinks. The current opioid crisis could have been better predicted given the trauma of mining and the past abuse of less-potent narcotics. A continuing major problem in the whole country is inadequate support for preventive health activities.

Using Mini-Grants To Build Multi-Sector Partnerships In Rural Tennessee, Ginny Kidwell, Kristine Bowers, Taylor M. Dula, Randolph F. Wykoff

Journal of Appalachian Health

Rural counties in Tennessee, including those located in Appalachia, face some of the greatest health challenges in the nation. Unpublished data collated by the East Tennessee State University College of Public Health (ETSU) show that Tennessee’s 52 Appalachian counties vary dramatically from its 43 non-Appalachian counties in virtually all socioeconomic, behavioral, and health outcome metrics. Since 2011, the Tennessee Institute of Public Health (TNIPH) has actively encouraged local communities to address behavior change, enhance educational achievement, and improve economic conditions as essential components for improving health and well-being in rural Tennessee.