CREAT: Census Research Exploration and Analysis Tool

CREAT is a data tool that explores connections between research published in the Center for Economic Studies (CES) working paper series. You can search working papers by automatically generated tags and keywords, or try searching for an author or a specific word/phrase.
Quick Tip: For organizations, surveys, or acronyms, search under Tags using the full name (e.g., "American Community Survey"). Alternatively, search the acronym under Text. For concise research topics or phrases (e.g., "unemployment rate" or "monopolistic"), use Keywords for the best results.

Explore Recent Working Papers and Trending Keywords

Trending Keywords Trending keywords are popular terms or phrases that appear more frequently in recent working papers compared to previous years.

By analyzing the frequency of keyword usage in papers over time, this box highlights keywords that have gained prominence in the last three years, giving users insights into what topics are currently "trending" within the CES working papers.
  • Working Paper

    Who Hires Whom? Entrepreneurial Backgrounds and Labor Market Opportunities

    July 2026

    Authors: Josh Feng, Xavier Jaravel

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-26-45

    What are the implications of unequal access to entrepreneurial careers for labor markets? Using data from the U.S. Census and LinkedIn profiles, we document that entrepreneurs are significantly more likely to hire workers from similar social backgrounds (gender, race, age, education, etc.). These effects are quantitatively large across several demographic dimensions. For example, female employee share at female-founded startups is 36.4pp higher after controlling for industry-by-metro area-by-cohort fixed effects, with corresponding estimates of 51.2pp for Blacks, 37.3pp for Hispanics, and 11.3pp for non-college individuals. Large effects are present in high-growth startups, across industries and occupations, and remain stable across new firm cohorts. In addition, we find that these differences persist out to at least 20 years. We use wage data and an AKM research design to untangle whether the relative differences are driven by labor demand or labor supply effects. We find that demand drives the differences: group-specific wage decompositions show that new firms pay higher relative wages to individuals from similar backgrounds to the entrepreneur. Using these estimates, we calibrate a model of entrepreneurship with heterogeneous ability and production functions, and assess the impacts on relative wage from reducing access barriers to entrepreneurship.
    View Full Paper PDF
    Next Icon A right-facing arrow inside a circle
  • Working Paper

    Access to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) at the State and Substate Levels: Meaning and Measurement

    July 2026

    Authors: Renuka Bhaskar, Thomas B. Foster, Michaela Dillon, Linden McBride, Mark Prell, Maria Perez-Patron, Erik Vickstrom, Brian Knop, Kegan O’Connor

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-26-44

    This study estimates eligibility and access rates for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) administrative data linked with American Community Survey (ACS) data. This study is one result of a long-term research collaboration among USDA's Economic Research Service; the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census; USDA's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS); and participating state WIC agencies.'By analyzing WIC participation at the state and substate levels, the report provides insights into program reach and demographic differences. The findings confirm that the Census Bureau estimates meet high statistical reliability standards, providing valuable data for program officials and managers, and other stakeholders, to enhance program outreach and effectiveness. A key focus of the report is the comparison between Census Bureau and USDA, FNS estimates, which differ in methodology and measurement scope.
    View Full Paper PDF
    Next Icon A right-facing arrow inside a circle
  • Working Paper

    Integrating Administrative and Survey Data to Estimate WIC Eligibility and Access

    July 2026

    Authors: Renuka Bhaskar, Thomas B. Foster, Michaela Dillon, Linden McBride, Mark Prell, Maria Perez-Patron, Erik Vickstrom, Brian Knop

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-26-43

    The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides benefits to low-income, nutritionally at-risk women, infants, and children. To administer WIC, officials and program managers at the federal and state level want to understand who is eligible for the program, who among the eligible population chooses to participate, and who is not accessing the program despite their eligibility. Novel individual-level data linkages between restricted-use WIC Administrative Records and the American Community Survey provide WIC access rates estimated at the state and county levels, as well as estimates disaggregated by the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of individuals and their households. These estimates are developed by the Census-FNS-ERS Joint Project, a research partnership among the U.S. Census Bureau, the US Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service and Economic Research Service, and state WIC agencies that provide the requisite WIC administrative data to the Census Bureau. This paper details and evaluates our current data linkage and estimation methods, reports results, and identifies areas for improvement and further research.
    View Full Paper PDF
    Next Icon A right-facing arrow inside a circle
  • Working Paper

    Minimum Wages and the Rise of the Robots

    July 2026

    Authors: Javier Miranda, Erik Brynjolfsson, Robert Seamans, J. Frank Li, Andrew Wang

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-26-42

    This paper studies how minimum wage policy affects firms' adoption of automation'technologies. Using both state-level measures of robot exposure and novel plant-level'data on industrial robot imports linked to U.S. Census microdata from 1992'2021,'we show that increases in minimum wages raise the likelihood of robot adoption in'manufacturing. Our preferred identification exploits discontinuities at state borders,'comparing otherwise similar firms exposed to different wage floors. Across specifications, a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage increases robot adoption by roughly'8 percent relative to the mean.
    View Full Paper PDF
    Next Icon A right-facing arrow inside a circle
  • Working Paper

    What Happens to Contractors After States Ban Affirmative Action?

    July 2026

    Authors: Benjamin V. Rosa

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-26-41

    Using restricted Census business records, I explore how banning affirmative action in state contracting affects minority- and women-owned business enterprises (MWBEs). I find that ending affirmative action led MWBE contractors to gradually downsize, with the most pronounced reductions in force experienced by Black-owned businesses and larger MWBEs. Despite these workforce changes, existing MWBEs were no more likely to shut down than other businesses. New MWBEs were relatively less common after a state's ban, highlighting how bans can shift the demographic composition of new contractors. A calibrated model suggests bans are equivalent to considerable reductions in MWBE productivity and scrap values.
    View Full Paper PDF
    Next Icon A right-facing arrow inside a circle