Papers Containing Keywords(s): 'expenditure'
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Authors
John Haltiwanger - 12
Randy Becker - 11
Alice Zawacki - 11
Ronald J Shadbegian - 10
Wayne B Gray - 9
Viewing papers 1 through 10 of 176
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Working PaperThe Adoption of Non-Rival Inputs and Firm Scope
April 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-28
Custom software is distinct from other types of capital in that it is non-rival'once a firm makes an investment in custom software, it can be used simultaneously across its many establishments. Using confidential U.S. Census data, we document that while firms with more establishments are more likely to invest in custom software, they spend less on it as a share of total capital expenditure. We explain these empirical patterns by developing a model that incorporates the non-rivalry of custom software. In the model, firms choose whether to adopt custom software, the intensity of their investment, and their scope, balancing the cost of managing multiple establishments with the increasing returns to scope from the nonrivalrous custom software investment. Using the calibrated model, we assess the extent to which the decline in the rental rate of custom software over the past 40 years can account for a number of macroeconomic trends, including increases in firm scope and concentration.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperAllocating Misallocation: Decomposing Measures of Aggregate Allocative Efficiency
April 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-26
We explore sources of measured misallocation using establishment data from U.S. manufacturing industries. We decompose standard revenue productivity dispersion statistics into contributions by dispersion in revenue margins over costs and dispersion in input cost shares across plants. We establish a formal link between these components and measured allocative efficiency. The results indicate the components contribute similarly to apparent rising misallocation in US manufacturing. We use the mapping between distortions that influence these distinct components to explore the relationship between inferred distortions and mechanisms that influence one or both sources of revenue productivity dispersion. Finally, we show rising misallocation in the US manufacturing sector in the last several decades is pervasive, and yet a few industries account for over half of the aggregate decline.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperManufacturing Dispersion: How Data Cleaning Choices Affect Measured Misallocation and Productivity Growth in the Annual Survey of Manufactures
September 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-67
Measurement of dispersion of productivity levels and productivity growth rates across businesses is a key input for answering a variety of important economic questions, such as understanding the allocation of economic inputs across businesses and over time. While item nonresponse is a readily quantifiable issue, we show there is also misreporting by respondents in the Annual Survey of Manufactures (ASM). Aware of these measurement issues, the Census Bureau edits and imputes survey responses before tabulation and dissemination. However, edit and imputation methods that are suitable for publishing aggregate totals may not be suitable for estimating other measures from the microdata. We show that the methods used dramatically affect estimates of productivity dispersion, allocative efficiency, and aggregate productivity growth. Using a Bayesian approach for editing and imputation, we model the joint distributions of all variables needed to estimate these measures, and we quantify the degree of uncertainty in the estimates due to imputations for faulty or missing data.View Full Paper PDF
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Working Paper'Class of Customer' Question from the US Economic Census
September 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-66
The Economic Census (EC) collects detailed information on the class of customers served by establishments'for example, the share of an establishment's sales to other businesses or to government entities'for a subset of sectors in the economy. In this paper, we evaluate the data from the 'Class of Customer' question from the EC, with a particular focus on sales to the government. These data have seldom been used in empirical research and are unique in that they enable researchers to link establishment-level Census data with information on government procurement. We compile and analyze large volumes of publicly available tabulated data about the class of customer question over time. Using these data, we document three main findings. First, total sales to government from establishments covered by the class of customer question account for approximately 4 percent of GDP'just under half of total government procurement as measured in the national accounts. Second, the sectoral distribution of government expenditure is significantly different from that of private sector spending. Certain industries, such as Construction and Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services, account for a much larger share of government expenditure relative to private sector expenditure. Third, sales to the government make up a substantial portion of total sales in several sectors'for instance, 70 percent in Facilities Support Services, 30 percent in Waste Treatment and Disposal, and 17 percent in Construction. Finally, we use the microdata to examine nonresponse rates to the class of customer question across establishments based on the number of employees.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperJob Tasks, Worker Skills, and Productivity
September 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-63
We present new empirical evidence suggesting that we can better understand productivity dispersion across businesses by accounting for differences in how tasks, skills, and occupations are organized. This aligns with growing attention to the task content of production. We link establishment-level data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey with productivity data from the Census Bureau's manufacturing surveys. Our analysis reveals strong relationships between establishment productivity and task, skill, and occupation inputs. These relationships are highly nonlinear and vary by industry. When we account for these patterns, we can explain a substantial share of productivity dispersion across establishments.View Full Paper PDF
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Working Paper'Oh, Give Me a Home (Trade Share)': Differential Import Price Inflation and Gains from Trade Across U.S. Households
July 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-47
Consumers are differentially exposed to trade based on their expenditures, but there is little data on how such trade exposure differs across consumer groups and over time. In this paper, we construct 'home trade shares' that vary by age, race, marital status, education, and urban status, and use these to analyze differences in inflation and welfare gains from trade for U.S. demographic groups over the years 1996'2018. We show that over this time period, import prices (inclusive of the effects of taste change) held down overall inflation for all groups. For the typical group, more than a quarter of the gains from trade relative to autarky accrued in our time period. Welfare gains from trade over our time period are largest for rural households, and smallest for Black households. Adding taste change to the typical welfare gains from trade formula boosts the gains for every group relative to the standard formula.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Rising Returns to R&D: Ideas Are Not Getting Harder to Find
May 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-29
R&D investment has grown robustly, yet aggregate productivity growth has stagnated. Is this because 'ideas are getting harder to find'? This paper uses micro-data from the US Census Bureau to explore the relationship between R&D and productivity in the manufacturing sector from 1976 to 2018. We find that both the elasticity of output (TFP) with respect to R&D and the marginal returns to R&D have risen sharply. Exploring factors affecting returns, we conclude that R&D obsolescence rates must have risen. Using a novel estimation approach, we find consistent evidence of sharply rising technological rivalry. These findings suggest that R&D has become more effective at finding productivity-enhancing ideas but these ideas may also render rivals' technologies obsolete, making innovations more transient.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Impact of Childcare Costs on Mothers' Labor Force Participation
April 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-25
The rising costs of childcare pose challenges for families, leading to difficult choices including those impacting mothers' labor force participation. This paper investigates the relationship between childcare costs and maternal employment. Using data from the National Database of Childcare Prices, the American Community Survey, and the Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics, we estimate the impact of childcare costs on mothers' labor force participation through two empirical strategies. A fixed-effects approach controls for geographic and temporal heterogeneity in costs as well as mothers' idiosyncratic preferences for work and childcare, while an instrumental variables approach addresses the endogeneity of mothers' preferences for work and childcare by leveraging exogenous geographic and temporal variation in childcare licensing requirements. Our findings across both research designs indicate that higher childcare costs reduce labor force participation among mothers, with lower-income mothers exhibiting greater responsiveness to changes in childcare costs.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperCorporate Share Repurchase Policies and Labor Share
February 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-14
Using census data, we investigate whether share repurchases are responsible for the fall in labor share in U.S. corporations. Recent legislation imposes taxes on share repurchases, motivated by the assertion that share repurchases have led to reduced labor payments. Using several empirical approaches, we find no evidence that increases in share repurchases contribute to decreases in labor share. Top share repurchasing firms since 1982 did not decrease labor share. We also rely on exogenous changes in share repurchases around EPS announcements to pinpoint causality. Policies aimed at improving labor share by discouraging share repurchases will likely not achieve their objectives.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Role of R&D Factors in Economic Growth
November 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-69
This paper studies factor usage in the R&D sector. I show that the usage of non-labor inputs in R&D is significant, and that their usage has grown much more rapidly than the R&D workforce. Using a standard growth decomposition applied to the aggregate idea production function, I estimate that at least 77% of idea growth since the early 1960s can be attributed to the growth of non-labor inputs in R&D. I demonstrate that a similar pattern would hold on the balanced growth path of a standard semi-endogenous growth model, and thus that the decomposition is not simply a by-product of rising research intensity. I then show that combining long-running differences in factor growth rates with non-unitary elasticities of substitution in idea production leads to a slowdown in idea growth whenever labor and capital are complementary. I conclude by estimating this elasticity of substitution and demonstrate that the results favor complimentarities.View Full Paper PDF
