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Working PaperPlace Based Economic Development and Tribal Casinos
April 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-24
Tribal lands in the U.S. have historically experienced some of the worst economic conditions in the nation. We review some existing research on the effect of American Indian tribal casinos on various measures of local economic development. This is an industry that began in the early 1990s and currently generates more than $40 billion annually. We also review the state of the literature on the effects of casino operations on communities in or adjacent to tribal areas. Using a new dataset linking individual and enterprise-level data longitudinally, this study examines the industry- and location-specific impacts of tribal casino operations. We focus in particular on the employment of American Indians. We document positive flows from unemployment and non-casino geographies to work in sectors related to casino operations. Tribal casinos differ from other standard place-based economic development projects in that they are focused on a single industry; we discuss these differences and note that some of the positive spillover effects may be similar to other, more standard place-based policies. Finally, we discuss additional and open-ended questions for future research on this topic.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperRe-assessing the Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis
April 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-23
We use detailed location information from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) database to develop new evidence on the effects of spatial mismatch on the relative earnings of Black workers in large US cities. We classify workplaces by the size of the pay premiums they offer in a two-way fixed effects model, providing a simple metric for defining 'good' jobs. We show that: (a) Black workers earn nearly the same average wage premiums as whites; (b) in most cities Black workers live closer to jobs, and closer to good jobs, than do whites; (c) Black workers typically commute shorter distances than whites; and (d) people who commute further earn higher average pay premiums, but the elasticity with respect to distance traveled is slightly lower for Black workers. We conclude that geographic proximity to good jobs is unlikely to be a major source of the racial earnings gaps in major U.S. cities today.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperSize Matters: Matching Externalities and the Advantages of Large Labor Markets
April 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-22
Economists have long hypothesized that large and thick labor markets facilitate the matching between workers and firms. We use administrative data from the LEHD to compare the job search outcomes of workers originally in large and small markets who lost their jobs due to a firm closure. We define a labor market as the Commuting Zone'industry pair in the quarter before the closure. To account for the possible sorting of high-quality workers into larger markets, the effect of market size is identified by comparing workers in large and small markets within the same CZ, conditional on workers fixed effects. In the six quarters before their firm's closure, workers in small and large markets have a similar probability of employment and quarterly earnings. Following the closure, workers in larger markets experience significantly shorter non-employment spells and smaller earning losses than workers in smaller markets, indicating that larger markets partially insure workers against idiosyncratic employment shocks. A 1 percent increase in market size results in a 0.015 and 0.023 percentage points increase in the 1-year re-employment probability of high school and college graduates, respectively. Displaced workers in larger markets also experience a significantly lower need for relocation to a different CZ. Conditional on finding a new job, the quality of the new worker-firm match is higher in larger markets, as proxied by a higher probability that the new match lasts more than one year; the new industry is the same as the old one; and the new industry is a 'good fit' for the worker's college major. Consistent with the notion that market size should be particularly consequential for more specialized workers, we find that the effects are larger in industries where human capital is more specialized and less portable. Our findings may help explain the geographical agglomeration of industries'especially those that make intensive use of highly specialized workers'and validate one of the mechanisms that urban economists have proposed for the existence of agglomeration economies.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperGrowth is Getting Harder to Find, Not Ideas
April 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-21
Relatively flat US output growth versus rising numbers of US researchers is often interpreted as evidence that "ideas are getting harder to find." We build a new 46-year panel tracking the universe of U.S. firms' patenting to investigate the micro underpinnings of this claim, separately examining the relationships between research inputs and ideas (patents) versus ideas and growth. Over our sample period, we find that researchers' patenting productivity is increasing, there is little evidence of any secular decline in high-quality patenting common to all firms, and the link between patents and growth is present, differs by type of idea, and is fairly stable. On the other hand, we find strong evidence of secular decreases in output unrelated to patenting, suggesting an important role for other factors. Together, these results invite renewed empirical and theoretical attention to the impact of ideas on growth. To that end, our patent-firm bridge, which will be available to researchers with approved access, is used to produce new, public-use statistics on the Business Dynamics of Patenting Firms (BDS-PF).View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Composition of Firm Workforces from 2006'2022: Findings from the Business Dynamics Statistics of Human Capital Experimental Product
April 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-20
We introduce the Business Dynamics Statistics of Human Capital (BDS-HC) tables, a new Census Bureau experimental product that provides public-use statistics on the workforce composition of firms and its relationship to business dynamics. We use administrative W-2 filings to combine population-level worker demographic data with longitudinal business data to estimate the demographic and educational composition of nearly all non-farm employer businesses in the United States between 2006 and 2022. We use this newly constructed data to document the evolution of employment, entry, and exit of employers based on their workforce compositions. We also provide new statistics on the interaction between firm and worker characteristics, including the composition of workers at startup firms. We find substantial changes between 2006 and 2022 in the distribution of employers along several dimensions, primarily driven by changing workforce compositions within continuing firms rather than the reallocation of employment between firms. We also highlight systematic differences in the business dynamics of firms by their workforce compositions, suggesting that different groups of workers face different economic environments due to their employers.View Full Paper PDF
