Capital Adjustment Patterns in Manufacturing Plants
September 1994
Working Paper Number:
CES-94-11
Abstract
A common result from altering several fundamental assumptions of the neoclassical investment model with convex adjustment costs is that investment may occur in lumpy episodes. This paper takes a step back and asks "How lumpy is the investment?" We answer this question by documenting the distributions of investment and capital adjustment for a sample of over 33,000 manufacturing plants drawn from over 400 four-digit industries. We find that many plants do undergo large investment episodes, however, there is tremendous variation across plants in their capital accumulation patterns. This paper explores how the variation in capital accumulation patterns vary by observable plant and firm characteristics, and how large investment episodes at the plant level transmit into fluctuations in aggregate investment.
Document Tags and Keywords
Keywords
Keywords are automatically generated using KeyBERT, a powerful and innovative
keyword extraction tool that utilizes BERT embeddings to ensure high-quality and contextually relevant
keywords.
By analyzing the content of working papers, KeyBERT identifies terms and phrases that capture the essence of the
text, highlighting the most significant topics and trends. This approach not only enhances searchability but
provides connections that go beyond potentially domain-specific author-defined keywords.
:
Tags
Tags are automatically generated using a pretrained language model from spaCy, which excels at
several tasks, including entity tagging.
The model is able to label words and phrases by part-of-speech,
including "organizations." By filtering for frequent words and phrases labeled as "organizations", papers are
identified to contain references to specific institutions, datasets, and other organizations.
:
Similar Working Papers
Similarity between working papers are determined by an unsupervised neural
network model
know as Doc2Vec.
Doc2Vec is a model that represents entire documents as fixed-length vectors, allowing for the
capture of semantic meaning in a way that relates to the context of words within the document. The model learns to
associate a unique vector with each document while simultaneously learning word vectors, enabling tasks such as
document classification, clustering, and similarity detection by preserving the order and structure of words. The
document vectors are compared using cosine similarity/distance to determine the most similar working papers.
Papers identified with 🔥 are in the top 20% of similarity.
The 10 most similar working papers to the working paper 'Capital Adjustment Patterns in Manufacturing Plants' are listed below in order of similarity.
-
Working PaperShift or replenishment? Reassessing the prospect of stable Spanish bilingualism across contexts of ethnic change
June 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-28
Much of the existing literature on Latinos' use of Spanish claims that a general pattern of intergenerational decline in the use of Spanish will produce an overall shift away from Spanish use in the U.S. (Rumbaut, Massey, and Bean 2006; Veltman 1983b, 1990). In contrast, recent works emphasize the importance of the social and linguistic context in reinforcing the use of Spanish as well as (pan)ethnic identities among U.S.-born Latinos (Linton 2004; Linton and Jim'nez 2009; Stevens 1992). This literature suggests conditions under which Spanish-English bilingualism might become stable at the level of metropolitan areas; however, such conditions depend on how immigration shapes the context of language use for native-born Latinos. Given the declining levels of immigration from Latin America, will bilingualism subside in the U.S., or have certain communities created conditions in which bilingualism can be stable? Using geocoded data from restricted access versions of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the American Community Survey (ACS), we model the probability of Spanish-English bilingualism among second- and third-generation Latinos using multilevel models with contextual measures of immigration and language use at both the neighborhood and metropolitan levels. We find evidence that U.S.-born Latinos are heavily influenced by the prevalence of Spanish use among U.S. born Latinos at both the metropolitan and neighborhood levels. Further, the proportion of foreign-born Latinos has little effect on the native born, after controlling for Spanish use among U.S,-born Latinos. These results are a first step in understanding the link between ethnic or panethnic contexts and language practices, and also in producing a better characterization of stable bilingualism that can be tested quantitatively.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperAccess Methods for United States Microdata
August 2007
Working Paper Number:
CES-07-25
Beyond the traditional methods of tabulations and public-use microdata samples, statistical agencies have developed four key alternatives for providing non-government researchers with access to confidential microdata to improve statistical modeling. The first, licensing, allows qualified researchers access to confidential microdata at their own facilities, provided certain security requirements are met. The second, statistical data enclaves, offer qualified researchers restricted access to confidential economic and demographic data at specific agency-controlled locations. Third, statistical agencies can offer remote access, through a computer interface, to the confidential data under automated or manual controls. Fourth, synthetic data developed from the original data but retaining the correlations in the original data have the potential for allowing a wide range of analyses.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperThe EITC over the business cycle: Who benefits?
December 2014
Working Paper Number:
carra-2014-15
In this paper, I examine the impact of the Great Recession on Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) eligibility. Because the EITC is structurally tied to earnings, the direction of this impact is not immediately obvious. Families who experience complete job loss for an entire tax year lose eligibility, while those experiencing underemployment (part-year employment, a reduction in hours, or spousal unemployment in married households) may become eligible. Determining the direction and magnitude of the impact is important for a number of reasons. The EITC has become the largest cash-transfer program in the U.S., and many low-earning families rely on it as a means of support in tough times. The program has largely been viewed as a replacement for welfare, enticing former welfare recipients into the labor force. However, the effectiveness of the EITC during a period of very high unemployment has not been assessed. To answer these questions, I first use the Current Population Survey (CPS) matched to Internal Revenue Service data from tax years 2005 to 2010 to assess patterns of employment and eligibility over the Great Recession for different labor-force groups. Results indicate that overall, EITC eligibility increased over the recession, but only among groups that were cushioned from total household earnings loss by marriage. I also use the 2006 CPS matched to tax data from 2005 through 2011 to examine changes in eligibility experienced by individuals over time. In assessing three competing causes of eligibility loss, I find that less-educated, unmarried women experienced a greater hazard of eligibility loss due a yearlong lack of earnings compared with other labor-market groups. I discuss the implications of these findings on the view of the EITC as a safety-net program.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperCareers of Minimum Wage Workers
January 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-07
We characterize the careers of minimum wage workers by merging SIPP panels covering 1992-2016 into the LEHD. A long-run analysis shows strong earnings growth for these workers in subsequent decades, becoming indistinguishable from peers earning modestly more initially. Most of this growth is due to the steep earnings trajectories of young workers. Older workers earning minimum wages show a modest dip in earnings at that moment compared to earlier and later periods. Increases in state minimum wages do not significantly alter the future careers of workers who are on the minimum wage when the increases occur.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperThe Shifting Job Tenure Distribution
January 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-12R
There has been a shift in the U.S. job tenure distribution toward longer-duration jobs since 2000. This change is apparent both in the tenure supplements to the Current Population Survey and in matched employer-employee data. A substantial portion of this shift can be accounted for by the ageing of the workforce and the decline in the entry rate of new employer businesses. This shift is accounted for more by declines in the hiring rate, which are concentrated in the labor market downturns associated with the 2001 and 2007-2009 recessions, rather than declines in separation rates. The increase in average real earnings since 2007 is less than what would be predicted by the shift toward longer-tenure jobs because of declines in tenure-held-constant real earnings. Regression estimates of the returns to job tenure provide no evidence that the shift in the job tenure distribution is being driven by better matches between workers and employers.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperThe Micro-Dynamics of Skill Mix Changes in a Dual Labor Market: The Spanish Manufacturing Experience
May 2009
Working Paper Number:
CES-09-12
As in many other developed countries, the share of skilled workers in Spain's labor force dramatically increased during the 1990s. This paper decomposes the aggregate skill mix change by a set of key firm characteristics and in the context of Spain's dual labor market. We find that continuing firms were the major drivers of skill mix growth and that expanding firms in particular increased their ratio of skilled workers. Net entry played a smaller but positive role due to higher-skilled entrants and lower-skilled exiters. Finally, we find that although firms with higher concentrations of temporary workers make bigger employment changes overall, firms' low-skilled employment is more strongly pro-cyclical than is high skilled employment.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperMale Earnings Volatility in LEHD before, during, and after the Great Recession
September 2020
Working Paper Number:
CES-20-31
This paper is part of a coordinated collection of papers on prime-age male earnings volatility. Each paper produces a similar set of statistics for the same reference population using a different primary data source. Our primary data source is the Census Bureau's Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) infrastructure files. Using LEHD data from 1998 to 2016, we create a well-defined population frame to facilitate accurate estimation of temporal changes comparable to designed longitudinal samples of people. We show that earnings volatility, excluding increases during recessions, has declined over the analysis period, a finding robust to various sensitivity analyses. Although we find volatility is declining, the effect is not homogeneous, particularly for workers with tenuous labor force attachment for whom volatility is increasing. These 'not stable' workers have earnings volatility approximately 30 times larger than stable workers, but more important for earnings volatility trends we observe a large increase in the share of stable employment from 60% in 1998 to 67% in 2016, which we show to largely be responsible for the decline in overall earnings volatility. To further emphasize the importance of not stable and/or low earning workers we also conduct comparisons with the PSID and show how changes over time in the share of workers at the bottom tail of the cross-sectional earnings distributions can produce either declining or increasing earnings volatility trends.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperThe Long-Term Effects of Income for At-Risk Infants: Evidence from Supplemental Security Income
March 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-10
This paper examines whether a generous cash intervention early in life can "undo" some of the long-term disadvantage associated with poor health at birth. We use new linkages between several large-scale administrative datasets to examine the short-, medium-, and long-term effects of providing low-income families with low birthweight infants support through the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. This program uses a birthweight cutoff at 1200 grams to determine eligibility. We find that families of infants born just below this cutoff experience a large increase in cash benefits totaling about 27%of family income in the first three years of the infant's life. These cash benefits persist at lower amounts through age 10. Eligible infants also experience a small but statistically significant increase in Medicaid enrollment during childhood. We examine whether this support affects health care use and mortality in infancy, educational performance in high school, post-secondary school attendance and college degree attainment, and earnings, public assistance use, and mortality in young adulthood for all infants born in California to low-income families whose birthweight puts them near the cutoff. We also examine whether these payments had spillover effects onto the older siblings of these infants who may have also benefited from the increase in family resources. Despite the comprehensive nature of this early life intervention, we detect no improvements in any of the study outcomes, nor do we find improvements among the older siblings of these infants. These null effects persist across several subgroups and alternative model specifications, and, for some outcomes, our estimates are precise enough to rule out published estimates of the effect of early life cash transfers in other settings.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperPoach or Promote? Job Sorting and Gender Earnings Inequality across U.S. Industries
April 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-23
I outline the sociological theory that would predict that external labor markets ' those in which more positions are filled with new hires rather from firm-internal promotions ' heighten gender based discrimination and contribute to earnings inequality. I test this theory by treating industries as miniature labor markets within the US with varying levels of gender inequality and different hiring practices. Using high quality administrative data from 1985 to 2013, including detailed work histories from this period, I compare the earnings of alike men and women across industries with different levels of reliance on external markets at different times. I find that men experience greater unexplained earnings relative to women ' unexplained in that it is not accounted for by work history or observable demographic characteristics ' when a greater share of earnings increase events occur outside the firm.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperPositioned at Extremes: Future Job Placements of Immigrant Students at U.S. Colleges
January 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-08
Immigrant students who attend U.S. colleges are disproportionately employed in either large firms'especially multinationals'or small firms and self-employment. Using linked Census and longitudinal employment data, we trace the jobs taken by college students in 2000 during the 2001-20 period and evaluate four mechanisms shaping sector and firm size placement: geographic clustering, degree specialization, firm capabilities/visas, and ethnic self-employment specialization. Degree fields predict large firm and MNE placement, while ethnic specialization explains small firm sorting. Immigrant students who remain in the U.S. earn more than their native peers, suggesting the segmentation reflects productive sorting rather than blocked opportunity.View Full Paper PDF
