Economics Commons^™

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 …

Socioeconomic Status, Child Health, And Future Outcomes: Lessons For Appalachia, Janet Currie

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Appalachians are in poor health relative to other Americans. For example, the ageadjusted all cause mortality rate for Appalachian in 2006 was over 900 per 100,000 compared to a rate of 760 per 100,000 for those outside of Appalachia. This essay shows that health disparities start before birth—the incidence of low birth weight is 90 1,000 in rural Appalachia compared to 83 per 1,000 outside the U.S. These disparities continue through childhood and into adulthood. Moreover, although African Americans are generally in poorer health relative to white Americans, disparities between Appalachia and the rest of the U.S. are much greater …

Kentucky Annual Economic Report 2009, Kenneth R. Troske, John Garen, Devanathan Sudharshan, Roy A. Sigafus

Kentucky Annual Economic Report

No abstract provided.

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 …

Changes In The Distribution Of Income Among Single Mother Families: Murphy Brown Meets Inequality, Christopher Bollinger, James P. Ziliak

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

We document the demographic and economic forces underlying changes in income inequality among single mother families over the past three decades in the United States. Using decomposable measures of after-tax income-to-needs inequality, we examine within- and between-group inequality based on education attainment, age, past marital status, race, and employment status. We also conduct income factor decompositions to quantify the relative contributions of earnings, transfers, other income, and taxes to inequality. Our results from the March Current Population Survey show that income-to-needs inequality rose nearly 30 percent between 1979 and 2005. The demographic decompositions indicate that most of the change in …

Educational Spending: Kentucky Vs. Other States, William Hoyt, Christopher Jepsen, Kenneth R. Troske

CBER Research Report

Excerpts from the executive summary:

The passage of the Kentucky Educational Reform Act (KERA) in 1990 had a dramatic impact on the funding of primary and secondary education in the state. The amount of money spent on education increased significantly with the passage of KERA with districts in rural areas of the state experiencing the largest growth in spending (Hoyt, 1999). This has led to a decline in the disparity between rural and urban districts in education spending. However, despite the increase in educational spending, Kentucky still lags behind the typical state in the U.S. in spending per student (Troske, …

Distributing Discipline: Race, Politics, And Punishment At The Frontlines Of Welfare Reform, Richard Fording, Joe Soss, Sanford F. Schram

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Numerous studies have confirmed that race plays an important role in shaping public preferences toward both redistribution and punishment. Likewise, studies suggest that punitive policy tools tend to be adopted by state governments in a pattern that tracks with the racial composition of state populations. Such evidence testifies to the enduring power of race in American politics, yet it has limited value for understanding how disciplinary policies get applied to individuals in implementation settings. To illuminate the relationship between race and the application of punitive policy tools, we analyze sanction patterns in the TANF program. Drawing on a model of …

The Effects Of Food Stamps On Exiting Welfare And Becoming Employed For Welfare Recipients, Charles Baum

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Welfare reform’s success encouraging employment may be affected by the federal Food Stamp program because many households receive welfare and Food Stamps. Food Stamp benefits could discourage employment because benefits are reduced proportionally with income; alternatively, it could encourage employment by increasing stability and allowing more resources to be allocated toward employment-related expenses. I examine the effects of Food Stamps on exiting welfare and becoming employed for welfare recipients. Results suggest, if anything, that Food Stamps discourage employment, and such benefits may discourage transitions off welfare, too. If so, then it may be necessary to study the determinants of welfare …

Welfare Reform And Juvenile Arrests, Tami Gurley-Calvez, Bethany Claus Widick

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Social policy, such as the legalization of abortion and the federal bans on lead in the 1970s, has been shown to significantly impact crime rates. With recent increases in juvenile arrests and violent crime rates, we explore whether further social policy—namely the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) welfare reform—has had an impact on crime.

There are various mechanisms by which the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, created by the 1996 PRWORA welfare reform, may influence criminal activity, especially among older children. Many welfare recipients were required to participate in work and education activities, which …

Distributional Effects Of Programmatic Features Of Medicaid/Schip On Transitions From Private Insurance Coverage Among Us Low-Income Children: A Dynamic Approach, Adetokunbo B. Oluwole

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

The goal of this study is to evaluate the effects of Medicaid/SCHIP eligibility and programmatic features on transitions from private insurance coverage among samples of American low-income children using monthly data from the 2001 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), a nationally representative data set. The estimation approach combines multilevel modeling and event history analysis, including a robust array of variables measuring programmatic features, individual child, family, and state attributes. Logistic regression results do not indicate an adverse effect of expanded Medicaid/SCHIP eligibility on private insurance coverage. Results also suggest that states which established stand-alone SCHIP …

High School Peer Networks And College Success: Lessons From Texas, Jason Fletcher, Marta Tienda

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

This paper uses administrative data from the University of Texas-Austin to examine whether high school peer networks at college entry influence college achievement, measured by grade point average (GPA) and persistence. For each freshman cohort from 1993 through 2003 we calculate the number and ethnic makeup of college freshmen from each Texas high school, which we use as a proxy for freshmen “peer network.” Empirical specifications include high school fixed effects to control for unobservable differences across schools that influence both college enrollment behavior and academic performance. Using an IV/fixed effects strategy that exploits the introduction and expansion of the …

Home Buying In New Orleans Before And After Katrina Patterns By Space, Race, And Income, Dan Immergluck, Yun Sang Lee

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Natural disasters can conceivably have significant impacts on the “neighborhood sorting” of different racial or economic groups across intrametropolitan space. Using Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data we examine mortgage-financed homebuying activity within the New Orleans MSA before and after Hurricane Katrina. We find that, while the total amount of homebuying in the 7-parish New Orleans MSA was relatively unchanged between 2004 and 2006, homebuying in the city declined significantly, and declined most in places experiencing severe storm damage. We also find that after Hurricane Katrina, the proportion of homebuyers in the region and the city who were African-American or low-income …

Economic Growth In Kentucky: Why Does Kentucky Lag Behind The Rest Of The South?, Christopher Jepsen, Kenneth Sanford, Kenneth R. Troske

CBER Research Report

Excerpts from the executive summary:

Kentucky has consistently been one of the poorest states in the country between 1939 and the present. On top of this already low level of income, Kentucky has experienced fairly slow growth in output in recent years. Between 1997 and 2004, Kentucky had an average annual growth in real gross state product (GSP) of 1.6 percent, ranking 43 rd in terms of growth in GSP relative to the rest of the states.

In contrast to Kentucky’s relatively stagnant growth, many of Kentucky’s neighbors, especially to the south, have experienced relatively rapid growth in average earnings …

Kentucky Annual Economic Report 2008, Kenneth R. Troske, John Garen, Devanathan Sudharshan, Roy A. Sigafus

Kentucky Annual Economic Report

No abstract provided.

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 …

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 …

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 …

Does Welfare Reform Work In Rural America? A 7-Year Follow-Up, Ann Tickamyer, Debra Henderson, Barry Tadlock

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Even before the advent of welfare reform, studies of low income working and welfare dependent groups showed that low wage working women are worse off than those who combine welfare with other income sources and that most used a wide variety of livelihood strategies. This is especially the case in poor rural settings where work is scarce and additional obstacles to employment such as lack of transportation and childcare are endemic. Data from a selfadministered survey of users of human service agency programs in four counties in a distressed region of Appalachian Ohio in 1999, 2001, and 2005, provide a …

The Individual, Regional And State Economic Impacts Of Kentucky Community And Technical Colleges, Glenn C. Blomquist, Paul A. Coomes, Christopher Jepsen, Brandon Koford, Barry Kornstein, Kenneth R. Troske

CBER Research Report

Excerpt from the executive summary:

This report presents the results of our nine-month effort to measure the economic value of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS), both directly to its students around the state, and indirectly to all residents of Kentucky. We find wide public support for KCTCS, and a willingness to pay for an expansion of its programs. We also find a large variation in the individual returns to community and technical college education, in terms of expected work-life earnings by gender and by region of the state.

From Brown To Busing, Elizabeth Cascio, Nora Gordon, Ethan Lewis, Sarah Reber

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

An extensive literature debates the causes and consequences of the desegregation of American schools in the twentieth century. Despite the social importance of desegregation and the magnitude of the literature, we have lacked a comprehensive accounting of the basic facts of school desegregation. This paper uses newly assembled data to document when and how Southern school districts desegregated, as well as the extent of court involvement in the desegregation process over the two full decades after Brown. We also examine heterogeneity in the path to desegregation by district characteristics. The results suggest that the existing quantitative literature, which generally either …

Transitions Into And Out Of The Wic Program: A Cause For Concern?, Alison Jacknowitz, Laura Tiehen

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Despite the health benefits of participation in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), many eligible households do not participate in WIC during pregnancy and others exit WIC after a child turns one year old. This research uses the first two waves of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) to advance our understanding of these transitions into and out of WIC. Findings suggest that those who exhibit better economic health across a variety of dimensions are more likely to delay entry into the program or exit after a child turns one year of age.

Linking Economic Development And Poverty: The Role Of Innovation And Innovation Capacity In The South, Jeremy Hall

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

While most economic development research views poverty as a sign of need for development or poverty reduction as an outcome of successful development, this study treats poverty as an independent variable alongside contemporary measures of innovation capacity that reflect state potential for economic development, examining the combined impact of poverty and innovation capacity on economic development outcomes. The study examines the effect poverty has on economic development outcomes given levels of innovation capacity, and the effect poverty has on formation of state innovation capacity. The methodology consists of pooled cross-sectional time-series analysis with panel corrected standard errors with lags. The …

Evidence About The Potential Role For Affirmative Action In Higher Education, Braz Camargo, Ralph Stinebrickner, Todd Stinebrickner

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

In two recent cases involving the University of Michigan, the Supreme Court examined whether race should be allowed to play an explicit role in the admission decisions of schools. The primary argument in these court cases and others has been that racial diversity strengthens the quality of education offered to all students. Underlying this argument is the notion that educational benefits arise if interactions between students of different races improve preparation for life after college by, among other things, fostering mutual understanding and correcting misperceptions. Then, a fundamental condition necessary for the primary legal argument to be compelling is that …

An Examination Of Incentives To Attract And Retain Businesses In Kentucky, William Hoyt, Christopher Jepsen, Kenneth R. Troske

CBER Research Report

Excerpt from the executive summary:

The offering of tax and other location-based incentives to firms considering locating operations in a state, as well as firms with existing operations, has become a common practice of both state and local governments in the past thirty years. However, these programs are not without their critics. Some of the concerns about these programs arise from the lack of strong evidence, either supportive or critical of these programs. The Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development contracted with the Center for Business and Economic Research (CBER) to produce a series of reports examining the effectiveness of tax …

Kentucky Annual Economic Report 2007, Kenneth R. Troske, John Garen, Devanathan Sudharshan, Roy A. Sigafus

Kentucky Annual Economic Report

No abstract provided.

Does Space Matter To The Employment Of Tanf Recipients? Evidence From A Dynamic Discrete Choice Model With Unobserved Effects, Shiferaw Gurmu, Keith R. Ihlanfeldt, William J. Smith

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

We study the factors affecting the employment probability of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients using recent quarterly panel data from Atlanta, Georgia. A central focus of our study is to determine whether the TANF recipient’s proximity to job opportunity and the availability of childcare affect her probability of full-time employment. Both static and dynamic models of employment choice are estimated that control for unobserved individual effects. We estimate models separately for a sub-sample of TANF recipients living in public housing, whose residential locations can be considered exogenously determined. We find substantial evidence that individual and family characteristics (such …

The Impact Of The Introduction Of Premiums Into A Schip Program, James Marton

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

This paper examines the introduction of premiums into the SCHIP program in Kentucky. Kentucky introduced a $20 monthly premium for SCHIP coverage for children with family incomes between 151% and 200% of the federal poverty level in December 2003. Administrative data between 2001 and 2004 is used to estimate a Cox proportional hazard model that predicts enrollment duration in this premium-paying category. The results suggest that a premium reduces the length of enrollment and that the effect is much stronger in the first two months after the introduction of the premium. Similar results are not found for the non-premium category.

Devolution, Discretion, And Local Variation In Tanf Sanctioning, Richard Fording, Sanford F. Schram, Joe Soss

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

No abstract.

Does Food Stamp Receipt Mediate The Relationship Between Food Insufficiency And Mental Health?, Colleen Heflin, James P. Ziliak

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Although the Food Stamp Program is the largest entitlement program remaining in the social safety net, comparatively little is known about the potential benefits that the program may confer on recipients. In this paper we examine an important dimension of well being, mental health, and the extent to which participation in the Food Stamp Program may attenuate the effect of food insufficiency on levels of emotional distress. Using longitudinal data from a nationally representative sample of families in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) we model emotional distress as a function of food insufficiency and other known risk factors …