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The Importance of Establishment Data in Economic Research

August 1993

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The 10 most similar working papers to the working paper 'The Importance of Establishment Data in Economic Research' are listed below in order of similarity.

• Working Paper

  🔥

  
  
  Multiple Classification Systems For Economic Data: Can A Thousand Flowers Bloom? And Should They?
  

  December 1991

  Authors: Robert H Mcguckin

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-91-08

  The principle that the statistical system should provide flexibility-- possibilities for generating multiple groupings of data to satisfy multiple objectives--if it is to satisfy users is universally accepted. Yet in practice, this goal has not been achieved. This paper discusses the feasibility of providing flexibility in the statistical system to accommodate multiple uses of the industrial data now primarily examined within the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system. In one sense, the question of feasibility is almost trivial. With today's computer technology, vast amounts of data can be manipulated and stored at very low cost. Reconfigurations of the basic data are very inexpensive compared to the cost of collecting the data. Flexibility in the statistical system implies more than the technical ability to regroup data. It requires that the basic data are sufficiently detailed to support user needs and are processed and maintained in a fashion that makes the use of a variety of aggregation rules possible. For this to happen, statistical agencies must recognize the need for high quality microdata and build this into their planning processes. Agencies need to view their missions from a multiple use perspective and move away from use of a primary reporting and collection vehicle. Although the categories used to report data must be flexible, practical considerations dictate that data collection proceed within a fixed classification system. It is simply too expensive for both respondents and statistical agencies to process survey responses in the absence of standardized forms, data entry programs, etc. I argue for a basic classification centered on commodities--products, services, raw materials and labor inputs--as the focus of data collection. The idea is to make the principle variables of interest--the commodities--the vehicle for the collection and processing of the data. For completeness, the basic classification should include labor usage through some form of occupational classification. In most economic surveys at the Census Bureau, the reporting unit and the classified unit have been the establishment. But there is no need for this to be so. The basic principle to be followed in data collection is that the data should be collected in the most efficient way--efficiency being defined jointly in terms of statistical agency collection costs and respondent burdens.
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• Working Paper

  
  
  Analytic Use Of Economic Microdata; A Model For Researcher Access With Confidentiality Protection
  

  August 1992

  Authors: Robert H Mcguckin

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-92-08

  A primary responsibility of the Center for Economic Studies (CES) of the U.S. Bureau of the Census is to facilitate researcher access to confidential economic microdata files. Benefits from this program accrue not only to policy makers--there is a growing awareness of the importance of microdata for analyzing both the descriptive and welfare implications of regulatory and environmental changes--but also and importantly to the statistical agencies themselves. In fact, there is substantial recent literature arguing for the proposition that the largest single improvement that the U.S. statistical system could make is to improve its analytic capabilities. In this paper I briefly discuss these benefits to greater access for analytical work and ways to achieve them. Due to the nature of business data, public use databases and masking technologies are not available as vehicles for releasing useful microdata files. I conclude that a combination of outside and inside research programs, carefully coordinated and integrated is the best model for ensuring that statistical agencies reap the gains from analytic data users. For the United States, at least, this is fortuitous with respect to justifying access since any direct research with confidential data by outsiders must have a "statistical purpose". Until the advent of CES, it was virtually impossible for researchers to work with the economic microdata collected by the various economic censuses. While the CES program is quite large, as it now stands, researchers, or their representatives, must come to the Census Bureau in Washington, D.C. to access the data. The success of the program has led to increasing demands for data access in facilities outside of the Washington, D.C. area. Two options are considered: 1) Establish Census Bureau facilities in various universities or similar nonprofit research facilities and 2) Develop CES regional operations in existing Census Bureau regional offices.
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• Working Paper

  
  
  Firm Performance And Evolution Empirical Regularities In The U.S. Microdata
  

  October 1996

  Authors: Robert H Mcguckin, J. Bradford Jensen

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-96-10

  This paper presents a view of firm performance, industry evolution, and economic growth that contrasts with the traditional representative firm model. The paper reviews recent empirical work, primarily studies using the Longitudinal Research Database (LRD), that explicitly focuses on individual business units. The major empirical regularity in the studies is that heterogeneity is pervasive -- it is found across and within all sectors and across all plant characteristics. Further, firms are not only different in the cross-section. They enter at different times, make different choices, and react differently to economic shocks. Thus, to understand economic performance and competition, one must move beyond representative firm models. Competition must be understood as a process in which some firms choose correctly and grow while other firms choose poorly and die; the growth of the successful firms at the expense of less successful rivals drives economic growth.
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• Working Paper

  
  
  Longitudinal Economic Data At The Census Bureau: A New Database Yields Fresh Insight On Some Old Issues
  

  January 1990

  Authors: Robert H Mcguckin

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-90-01

  This paper has two goals. First, it illustrates the importance of panel data with examples taken from research in progress using the U.S. Census Bureau's Longitudinal Research Database ( LRD ). Although the LRD is not the result of a "true" longitudinal survey, it provides both balanced and unbalanced panel data sets for establishments, firms, and lines of business. The second goal is to integrate the results of recent research with the LRD and to draw conclusions about the importance of longitudinal microdata for econometric research and time series analysis. The advantages of panel data arise from both the micro and time series aspects of the observations. This also leads us to consider why panel data are necessary to understand and interpret the time series behavior of aggregate statistics produced in cross-section establishment surveys and censuses. We find that typical homogeneity assumptions are likely to be inappropriate in a wide variety of applications. In particular, the industry in which an establishment is located, the ownership of the establishment, and the existence of the establishment (births and deaths) are endogenous variables that cannot simply be taken as time invariant fixed effects in econometric modeling.
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• Working Paper

  
  
  ON THE SOURCES AND SIZE OF EMPLOYMENT ADJUSTMENT COSTS
  

  May 1999

  Authors: Lucia Foster

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-99-07

  Micro employment adjustment costs affect not only establishment-level dynamics but can also affect aggregate employment dynamics. The difficulties in directly observing and measuring these adjustment costs necessitate an indirect approach in order to learn more about the sources and size of these costs. This paper examines differences in employment adjustments by worker and establishment characteristics using micro-level data for approximately 11,000 U.S. manufacturing plants. Differences in the speed of adjustment within the organizing framework of the traditional partial adjustment model are used to identify the source and size of employment adjustment costs. The estimates are undertaken using three different techniques and under a variety of assumptions concerning market structure, worker heterogeneity, and degree of interrelation of inputs. The estimates show that employment adjustment speeds differ over worker and establishment characteristics in a manner that is consistent with the underlying adjustment cost stories. These differences suggest that systematic changes in the distribution of establishments over these characteristics can influence aggregate employment dynamics in response to a shock through compositional effects.
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• Working Paper

  
  
  Price Dispersion in U.S. Manufacturing
  

  October 1989

  Authors: Thomas A Abbott Iii

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-89-07

  This paper addresses the question of whether products in the U.S. Manufacturing sector sell at a single (common) price, or whether prices vary across producers. The question of price dispersion is important for two reasons. First, if prices vary across producers, the standard method of using industry price deflators leads to errors in measuring real output at the firm or establishment level. These errors in turn lead to biased estimates of the production function and productivity growth equation as shown in Abbott (1988). Second, if prices vary across producers, it suggests that producers do not take prices as given but use price as a competitive variable. This has several implications for how economists model competitive behavior.
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• Working Paper

  
  
  Factor Substitution In U.S. Manufacturing: Does Plant Size Matter
  

  April 1998

  Authors: Sang V Nguyen, Mary L Streitwieser

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-98-06

  We use micro data for 10,412 U.S. manufacturing plants to estimate the degrees of factor substitution by industry and by plant size. We find that (1) capital, labor, energy and materials are substitutes in production, and (2) the degrees of substitution among inputs are quite similar across plant sizes in a majority of industries. Two important implications of these findings are that (1) small plants are typically as flexible as large plants in factor substitution; consequently, economic policies such energy conservation policies that result in rising energy prices would not cause negative effects on either large or small U.S. manufacturing plants; and (2) since energy and capital are found to be substitutes; the 1973 energy crisis is unlikely to be a significant factor contributing to the post 1973 productivity slowdown. of Substitution
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• Working Paper

  
  
  Unlocking the Information in Integrated Social Data
  

  May 2002

  Authors: John M. Abowd

  Working Paper Number:

  tp-2002-21

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• Working Paper

  
  
  Employment Adjustment Costs and Establishment Characteristics
  

  November 1999

  Authors: Lucia Foster

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-99-15

  Microeconomic employment adjustment costs affect not only employment adjustments at the micro level but may also profoundly impact aggregate employment dynamics. This paper sheds light on the nature of these microeconomic employment adjustment costs and quantifies their impact on aggregate employment dynamics. The empirical exercises in the paper analyze the differences in employment adjustments by establishment characteristics within a hazard model framework using micro data for approximately 10,000 U.S. manufacturing plants. I find that employment adjustments vary systematically by establishment characteristics; moreover, these variations suggest that employment adjustment costs reflect the technology of the plant, the skill of its workforce, and the plant's access to capital markets. Concerning the structure of the adjustment costs, the employment adjustments have significant nonlinearities and asymmetries consistent with nonconvex, asymmetric adjustment costs. Specifically, employment adjustment behavior shows substantial inertia in the face of large employment surpluses, varied adjustment behavior for small deviations from desired employment, and (S,s)-type of bimodal adjustments in response to large employment shortages. Finally, the micro level heterogeneity, asymmetries, and nonlinearities significantly impact sectoral and aggregate employment dynamics.
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• Working Paper

  
  
  Measuring Plant Level Energy Efficiency and Technical Change in the U.S. Metal-Based Durable Manufacturing Sector Using Stochastic Frontier Analysis
  

  January 2016

  Authors: Gale Boyd, Jonathan M. Lee

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-16-52

  This study analyzes the electric and thermal energy efficiency for five different metal-based durable manufacturing industries in the United States from 1987-2012 at the 3 digit North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) level. Using confidential plant-level data on energy use and production from the quinquennial U.S. Economic Census, a stochastic frontier regression analysis (SFA) is applied in six repeated cross sections for each five year census. The SFA controls for energy prices and climate-driven energy demand (heating degree days - HDD - and cooling degree days - CDD) due to differences in plant level locations, as well as 6-digit NAICS industry effects. A Malmquist index is used to decompose aggregate plant technical change in energy use into indices of efficiency and frontier (best practice) change. Own energy price elasticities range from -.7 to -1.0, with electricity tending to have slightly higher elasticity than fuel. Mean efficiency estimates (100 percent equals best practice level) range from a low of 32 percent (thermal 334 - Computer and Electronic Products) to a high of 86 percent (electricity 332 - Fabricated Metal Products). Electric efficiency is consistently better than thermal efficiency for all NAICS. There is no clear pattern to the decomposition of aggregate technical Thermal change. In some years efficiency improvement dominates; in other years aggregate technical change is driven by improvement in best practice.
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