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Papers written by Author(s): 'Kenneth R Troske'

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  • Working Paper

    Wage and Productivity Dispersion in U.S. Manufacturing: The Role of Computer Investment

    March 2000

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-00-01

    By exploiting establishment-level data for U.S. manufacturing, this paper sheds new light on the source of the changes in the structure of production, wages, and employment that have occurred over the last several decades. Based on recent theoretical work by Caselli (1999) and Kremer and Maskin (1996), we focus on empirically investigating the following two hypotheses. The first hypothesis is that the channel through which skill biased technical change works through the economy is via changes in the dispersion in wages and productivity across establishments. The second is that the increased dispersion in wages and productivity across establishments is linked to differential rates of technological adoption across establishments. We find empirical support for these hypotheses. Our main findings are that (1) the between plant component of wage dispersion is an important and growing part of total wage dispersion, (2) much of the between plant increase in dispersion is within industries, (3) the between plant measures of wage and productivity dispersion have indreased substantially over the last few decades, (4) industries with large changes in between plant wage dispersion also exhibit large changes n between plant productivity dispersion, (5) a substantial fraction of the rising dispersion in wages and productivity is accounted for by increasing wage and productivity differentials across high and low computer investment per worker plants and high and low capital intensity plants, and (6) Changes in dispersion accounted for by such observable characteristics yield predicted industry level changes in wage and productivity dispersion that are highly correlated.
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  • Working Paper

    NEW EVIDENCE ON SEX SEGREGATION AND SEX DIFFERENCES IN WAGES FROM MATCHED EMPLOYEE-EMPLOYER DATA*

    December 1998

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-98-18

    We assemble a new matched employer-employee data set covering essentially all industries and occupations across all regions of the U.S. We use this data set to re-examine the question of the relative contributions to the overall sex gap in wages of sex segregation vs. wage differences by sex within occupation, industry, establishment, and occupation-establishment cells. This new data set is especially useful because earlier research on this topic relied on data sets that covered only a narrow range of industries, occupations, or regions. Our results indicate that a sizable fraction of the sex gap in wages is accounted for by the segregation of women into lower-paying occupations, industries, establishments, and occupations within establishments. Nonetheless, a substantial part of the sex gap in wages remains attributable to the individual's sex. This latter finding contrasts sharply with the conclusions of previous research (especially Groshen, 1991), which indicated that sex segregation accounted for essentially all of the sex wage gap. Further research into the sources of within-establishment within-occupation sex wage differences is therefore much more important than previously thought.
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  • Working Paper

    Technology and Jobs: Secular Changes and Cyclical Dynamics

    September 1996

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-96-07

    In this paper, we exploit plant-level data for U.S. manufacturing for the 1970s and 1980s to explore the connections between changes in technology and the structure of employment and wages. We focus on the nonproduction labor share (measured alternatively by employment and wages) as the variable of interest. Our main findings are summarized as follows: (i) aggregate changes in the nonproduction labor share at annual and longer frequencies are dominated by within plant changes; (ii) the distribution of annual within plant changes exhibits a spike at zero, tremendous heterogeneity and fat left and right tails; (iii) within plant secular changes are concentrated in recessions; and (iv) while observable indicators of changes in technology account for a significant fraction of the secular increase in the average nonproduction labor share, unobservable factors account for most of the secular increase, most of the cyclical variation and most of the cross sectional heterogeneity.
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  • Working Paper

    Interfirm Segregation and the Black/White Wage Gap

    August 1996

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-96-06

    This paper studies interfirm racial segregation in two newly developed firm-level databases. Within the representative MSA, we find that the interfirm distribution of black and white workers is close to what would be implied by the random assignment of workers to firms. However, we also find that black workers are systematically clustered in "black" employers where managers, owners, and customers are also black. These facts may be reconciled by the facts that a) there are not enough black employers to generate much segregation and that b) perhaps other difficult-to-identify forces serve to systematically integrate black and white workers. Finally, we find that the black/white wage gap is entirely a within-firm phenomenon, as blacks do not work in firms that pay low wages on average.
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  • Working Paper

    Sex Segregation in U.S. Manufacturing

    June 1996

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-96-04

    This paper studies interplant sex segregation in the U.S. manufacturing industry. The study differs from previous work in that we have detailed information on the characteristics of both workers and firms, and because we measure segregation in a new and better way. We report three main findings. First, there is a substantial amount of interplant sex segregation in the U.S. manufacturing industry, although segregation is far from complete. Second, we find that female managers tend to work in the same plants as female supervisees, even once we control for other plant characteristics. And finally, we find that interplant segregation can account for a substantial fraction of the male/female wage gap in the manufacturing industry, particularly among blue-collar workers.
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  • Working Paper

    The Worker-Establishment Characteristics Database

    June 1995

    Authors: Kenneth R Troske

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-95-10

    A data set combining information on the characteristics of both workers and their employers has long been a grail for labor economists. The reason for this interest is that while a number of theoretical models in labor economics stress the importance of employer-employee matching in determining labor market outcomes, almost all empirical work relies on either worker surveys with little information about employers or establishment surveys with little information about workers. The Worker-Establishment Characteristic Database (WECD) represents just such an employer-employee-matched database. Containing 199,557 manufacturing workers matched to 16,144 manufacturing establishments, the WECD is the largest worker-firm matched data set available for the U.S. This paper describes how this data set was constructed and assesses the usefulness of these data for economic research. In addition, I discuss some of the issues that can be addressed using employer-employee-matched data and plans for creating future versions of the WECD.
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  • Working Paper

    Evidence on the Employer Size-Wage Premium From Worker-Establishment Matched Data

    August 1994

    Authors: Kenneth R Troske

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-94-10

    In spite of the large and growing importance of the employer size-wage premium, previous attempts to account for this phenomenon using observable worker or employer characteristics have met with limited success. The primary reason for this lack of success has been the lack of suitable data. While most theoretical explanations for the size-wage premium are based on the matching of employer and employee characteristics, previous empirical work has relied on either worker surveys with little information about a worker's employer, or establishment surveys with little information about workers. In contrast, this study uses the newly created Worker-Establishment Characteristic Database, which contains linked employer-employee data for a large sample of manufacturing workers and establishments, to examine the employer size-wage premium. The main results are: 1) Examining the cross-plant distribution of the skill of workers shows that managers with larger observable measures of skill work in large plants and firms with production workers with larger observable measures of skill. 2) Results from reduced form wage regressions show that including measures of the amount or type of capital in a worker's plant eliminates the establishment size-wage premium. 3) These results are robust to efforts at correcting for possible bias in the parameter estimates due to sample selection. While these findings are consistent with neoclassical explanations for the size-wage premium that hypothesize that large employers employ more skilled workers, their primary importance is that they show that the employer size-wage premium can be accounted for with employer-employee matched data. As such, these data lend support to models which emphasize the role of employer-employee matching in accounting for both cross-sectional and dynamic aspects of the wage distribution.
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  • Working Paper

    Gender Segregation Small Firms

    October 1992

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-92-13

    This paper studies interfirm gender segregation in a unique sample of small employers. We focus on small firms because previous research on interfirm segregation has studied only large firms and because it is easier to link the demographic characteristics of employers and employees in small firms. This latter feature permits an assessment of the role of employer discrimination in creating gender segregation. Our first finding is that interfirm segregation is prevalent among small employers. Indeed men and women rarely work in fully integrated firms. Our second finding is that the education and gender of the business owner strongly influence the gender composition of a firm's workforce. This suggests that employer discrimination may be an important cause of workplace gender segregation. Finally, we estimate that interfirm segregation can account for up to 50% of the gender gap in annual earnings.
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  • Working Paper

    The Time-Series Pattern Of Firm Growth In Two Industries

    September 1992

    Authors: Kenneth R Troske

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-92-10

    Using a unique firm-level longitudinal data set that covers both the manufacturing and finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) industries, this paper examines the time-series pattern of firm growth both immediately after entry and immediately prior to exit, and compares these patterns across the two industries. While previous research has examined the post-entry time-series behavior of firms, this research has focused exclusively on manufacturing firms. Examining the behavior of nonmanufacturing firms is important for two reasons. First, since the relative importance of the manufacturing industry has been declining recently, the behavior of manufacturing firms may be much different than the behavior of firms in an expanding industry, such as FIRE. Thus, comparing the growth of firms in a nonmanufacturing industry, with the growth of manufacturing firms provides more general knowledge about firm behavior. Second, since any good theory of firm dynamics should explain cross-industry differences in firm behavior, cross-industry differences in behavior must be documented before models of this type can be developed. The main finding of this paper are: (1) relative to FIRE firms, manufacturing firms experience more periods of above average growth immediately after entry; (2) relative to FIRE firms, manufacturing firms experience more periods of below average growth immediately prior to exit; and (3) relative to the growth of manufacturing firms, the growth of the typical FIRE firm is much more responsive to transitory shocks.
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