Cuts in U.S. Department of Defense budgets have led to changes in the personnel levels at military bases throughout the United States. Because these bases are often significant sources of civilian and military employment and also provide customers for local businesses, closing them distresses local citizens, business leaders and politicians. In, Defense Secretary William Cohen launched a new drive to close dozens more military bases. Given the timeliness and magnitude of these actions, and in light of the predictions of hardship surrounding them, it is important to realistically assess the impact of substantial personnel changes at military bases on employment at neighboring businesses. This study utilizes a new and uniquely well-suited confidential dataset to analyze this issue at the level closures' impact are thought to occur: individual establishments and their employees. Using an establishment-level panel dataset that covers all private establishments in California with positive employment from 1989 to 1996, I examine how the employment dynamics of establishments across the full spectrum of industries are affected by personnel changes at nearby military bases and find that despite establishments' growth rates declining, more establishments going out of business and fewer new ones starting, when bases close workers' employment prospects actually improve.
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MEASURES OF JOB FLOW DYNAMICS IN THE U.S.*
January 1999
Working Paper Number:
CES-99-01
This paper uses the new Longitudinal Establishment and Enterprise Microdata (LEEM) at CES to investigate gross and net job flows for the U. S. economy. Much of the previous work on U.S. job flows has been based on analysis of the Longitudinal Research Database (LRD), which is limited to establishments in the manufacturing sector. The LEEM is the first high-quality, nationwide, comprehensive database for both manufacturing and non-manufacturing that is suitable for measuring annual job flows. We utilize the LEEM data to measure recent gross and net job flows for the entire U. S. economy. We then examine the relationships between firm size, establishment size, and establishment age, and investigate differences resulting from use of two alternative methods for classification of job flows by size of firm and establishment. Cell-based regression analysis is used to help distinguish among the effects of age, firm size, and establishment size on gross and net job flows in existing establishments. We find that gross job flow rates decline with age, and with increasing establishment size when controlling for age differences, whether initial size or mean size classification is utilized. Firm size differences contribute little or nothing additional when establishment size and age are controlled for. However, the relationship of net job growth to business size is very sensitive to the size classification method, even when data and all other methodology are identical. When mean size classification is used, the coefficient on establishment size for net job growth is generally positive, but when initial size is used, this coefficient is negative. These results shed light on some of the apparently conflicting findings in the literature on the relationship between net growth and the size of businesses.
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GOVERNMENT TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS* AND PLANT SURVIVAL: THE ROLE OF PLANT OWNERSHIP TYPE
February 1999
Working Paper Number:
CES-99-02
This paper compares the survival rates of plants participating in manufacturing extension programs to nonparticipating plants. Participating plants receive technical and business assistance from one of a nationwide network of extension centers intended to assist smaller manufacturers. Results suggest that plant survival is related to plant size, age, productivity, capital intensity and ownership type. Importantly, the impact of extension services differs across ownership types. Participating in extension increases the probability of survival for single unit plants, but not for multi units. This result is consistent with the notion that single unit plants have less access to information on new technologies and would, therefore, benefit more from technical assistance programs such as manufacturing extension.
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Agglomeration, Enterprise Size, and Productivity
August 2004
Working Paper Number:
CES-04-15
Much research on agglomeration economies, and particularly recent work that builds on Marshall's concept of the industrial district, postulates that benefits derived from proximity between businesses are strongest for small enterprises (Humphrey 1995, Sweeney and Feser 1998). With internal economies a function of the shape of the average cost curve and level of production, and external economies in shifts of that curve, a small firm enjoying external economies characteristic of industrial districts (or complexes or simply urbanized areas) may face the same average costs as the larger firm producing a higher volume of output (Oughton and Whittam 1997; Carlsson 1996; Humphrey 1995). Thus we observe the seeming paradox of large firms that enjoy internal economies of scale co-existing with smaller enterprises that should, by all accounts, be operating below minimum efficient scale. With the Birch-inspired debate on the relative job- and innovation-generating capacity of small and large firms abating (Ettlinger 1997), research on the small firm sector has shifted to an examination of the business strategies and sources of competitiveness of small enterprises (e.g., Pratten 1991, Nooteboom 1993). Technological external scale economies are a key feature of this research (Oughton and Whittam 1997).
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Geographic Redistribution of the U.S. Manufacturing and The Role of State Development Policy
March 2007
Working Paper Number:
CES-07-06
Competition among state and local governments to lure businesses has attracted considerable interest from economists, as well as legislators and policy makers. This paper quantifies the role of plant relocations in the geographic redistribution of manufacturing employment and examines the effectiveness of state development policy. Only a few studies have looked at how manufacturing firms locate their production facilities geographically; they have used either small manufacturing samples or small geographic regions. This paper provides broader evidence of the impact of plant relocations using confidential establishment level data from the U.S. Census Longitudinal Research Database (LRD), covering the full population of manufacturing establishments in the United States over the period from 1972 to 1992. This paper finds a relatively small role for relocation in explaining the disparity of manufacturing employment growth rates across states. Moreover, it finds evidence of very weak effects of incentive programs on plant relocations.
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Job Flow Dynamics in the Service Sector
November 1999
Working Paper Number:
CES-99-14
This paper uses the new comprehensive Longitudinal Establishment and Enterprise Microdata at CES to investigate gross and net job flows for 1990 to 1995 for all establishments in the service sector. After examining the recent shifts in the distribution of employment in non-financial services, from single unit firms to multi-unit firms, and from smaller firms to larger ones, we calculate five year gross and net job flow rates for these various types of establishments. This shows that the increasing share of service employment in large firms is not due to higher growth in larger firms. Seeking the dynamics behind the shift of employment to larger firms, we investigate how job flow rates are related to firm and establishment size, using alternative size classification methods. Gross job flow rates vary inversely with the age of establishments in services, as do net growth rates of surviving establishments, even after controlling for size. To help distinguish among the effects of age, firm size, and establishment size on gross and net job flows in services, multivariate regression analysis is used. We find that all gross job flow rates decline with increasing age of establishments when size and industry differences are controlled. Because the job destruction rate falls faster than the creation rate as age increases, net growth rates increase with age for services as a whole. Gross and net job creation also declines with increasing size of establishments, but destruction rates increase with size when controlling for age and industry differences. Firm size differences contribute little or nothing additional when we control for establishment size and age.
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Civic Community in Small-Town America: How Civic Welfare is Influenced by Local Capitalism and Civic Engagement
December 2001
Working Paper Number:
CES-01-19
The aims of this paper are twofold: first, to gain a fuller understanding of factors that foster community cohesion and contribute to the residents' social and economic well-being; and, second, to move beyond previous research that used larger spatial units such as states, counties, or aggregates of counties and to focus instead on American small towns (population 2,500-20,000). The data on small towns are drawn from public-use files and from confidential microdata from various economic censuses. From these sources we construct measures of locally oriented firms, self-employment, business establishments that serve as gathering places, and associations. The local capitalism and civic engagement variables generally perform as hypothesized; in some cases they are related quite strongly to civic welfare outcomes such as income levels, poverty rates, and nonmigration rates. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of working with place-level data and suggest some strategies for subsequent work on small towns and other incorporated places.
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The Contribution Of Establishment Births And Deaths To Employment Growth
April 1998
Working Paper Number:
CES-98-05
The purpose of this paper is to examine how establishment births and deaths contribute to job creation, job destruction, and net employment growth at different frequencies of measurement. The longitudinal data are constructed from quarterly unemployment insurance microdata, and are essentially a census of establishments in all industries. Defining establishment births and deaths turns out to be an exercise in how to use cross-sectional administrative data for longitudinal research purposes. The analysis of job flows indicates that the frame is relatively small but certainly non-trivial, whereas births and deaths account for roughly half of all jobs created and destroyed on a triennial time frame. Net Employment Growth
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Access to Workers or Employers? An Intra-Urban Analysis of Plant Location Decisions
September 2010
Working Paper Number:
CES-10-21R
This analysis attributes economies of agglomeration to either labor market pooling or employer-based productivity spillovers by distinguishing the effect of access to workers, measured by place-of-residence, from the effect of access to employers. New establishment location choices serve as a measure of productivity advantages, while census tract level data on access to same-industry employment, other-industry employment, and specialized workers, as well as metropolitan area fixed effects, measure sources of agglomeration and other locational characteristics. The four industries included are selected so that each relies on a workforce with a specialized occupation that is identifiable by place-of-residence, and that productivity and cost advantages are the primary drivers of location choice. The results show that both access to specialized workers and access to same-industry employers contribute to economies of agglomeration at an intra-urban spatial scale, and that the magnitude of the worker effect is large relative to employer-based productivity spillovers.
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Mom-and-Pop Meet Big-Box: Complements or Substitutes?
September 2009
Working Paper Number:
CES-09-34
In part due to the popular perception that Big-Boxes displace smaller, often family owned (a.k.a. Mom-and-Pop) retail establishments, several empirical studies have examined the evidence on how Big-Boxes' impact local retail employment but no clear consensus has emerged. To help shed light on this debate, we exploit establishment-level data with detailed location information from a single metropolitan area to quantify the impact of Big-Box store entry and growth on nearby single unit and local chain stores. We incorporate a rich set of controls for local retail market conditions as well as whether or not the Big-Boxes are in the same sector as the smaller stores. We find a substantial negative impact of Big-Box entry and growth on the employment growth at both single unit and especially smaller chain stores ' but only when the Big-Box activity is both in the immediate area and in the same detailed industry.
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The China Shock Revisited: Job Reallocation and Industry Switching in U.S. Labor Markets
October 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-65
Using confidential administrative data from the U.S. Census Bureau we revisit how the rise in Chinese import penetration has reshaped U.S. local labor markets. Local labor markets more exposed to the China shock experienced larger reallocation from manufacturing to services jobs. Most of this reallocation occurred within firms that simultaneously contracted manufacturing operations while expanding employment in services. Notably, about 40% of the manufacturing job loss effect is due to continuing establishments switching their primary activity from manufacturing to trade-related services such as research, management, and wholesale. The effects of Chinese import penetration vary by local labor market characteristics. In areas with high human capital, including much of the West Coast and large cities, job reallocation from manufacturing to services has been substantial. In areas with low human capital and a high initial manufacturing share, including much of the Midwest and the South, we find limited job reallocation. We estimate this differential response to the China shock accounts for half of the 1997-2007 job growth gap between these regions.
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