Papers Containing Keywords(s): 'plant productivity'
The following papers contain search terms that you selected. From the papers listed below, you can navigate to the PDF, the profile page for that working paper, or see all the working papers written by an author. You can also explore tags, keywords, and authors that occur frequently within these papers.
See Working Papers by Tag(s), Keywords(s), Author(s), or Search Text
Click here to search again
Frequently Occurring Concepts within this Search
Viewing papers 1 through 10 of 36
-
Working PaperTemperature and Local Industry Concentration
October 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-51
We use plant-level data from the US Census of Manufacturers to study the short and long run effects of temperature on manufacturing activity. We document that temperature shocks significantly increase energy costs and lower the productivity of small manufacturing plants, while large plants are mostly unaffected. In US counties that experienced higher increases in average temperatures between the 1980s and the 2010s, these heterogeneous effects have led to higher concentration of manufacturing activity within large plants, and a reallocation of labor from small to large manufacturing establishments. We offer a preliminary discussion of potential mechanisms explaining why large manufacturing firms might be better equipped for long-run adaptation to climate change, including their ability to hedge across locations, easier access to finance, and higher managerial skills.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperAgglomeration Spillovers and Persistence: New Evidence from Large Plant Openings
June 2022
Working Paper Number:
CES-22-21
We use confidential Census microdata to compare outcomes for plants in counties that 'win' a new plant to plants in similar counties that did not to receive the new plant, providing empirical evidence on the economic theories used to justify local industrial policies. We find little evidence that the average highly incentivized large plant generates significant productivity spillovers. Our semiparametric estimates of the overall local agglomeration function indicate that residual TFP is linear for the range of 'agglomeration' densities most frequently observed, suggesting local economic shocks do not push local economies to a new higher equilibrium. Examining changes twenty years after the new plant entrant, we find some evidence of persistent, positive increases in winning county-manufacturing shares that are not driven by establishment births.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperMisallocation or Mismeasurement?
February 2020
Working Paper Number:
CES-20-07
The ratio of revenue to inputs differs greatly across plants within countries such as the U.S. and India. Such gaps may reflect misallocation which hinders aggregate productivity. But differences in measured average products need not reflect differences in true marginal products. We propose a way to estimate the gaps in true marginal products in the presence of measurement error. Our method exploits how revenue growth is less sensitive to input growth when a plant's average products are overstated by measurement error. For Indian manufacturing from 1985'2013, our correction lowers potential gains from reallocation by 20%. For the U.S. the effect is even more dramatic, reducing potential gains by 60% and eliminating 2/3 of a severe downward trend in allocative efficiency over 1978'2013.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperEnvironmental Regulation, Abatement, and Productivity: A Frontier Analysis
September 2013
Working Paper Number:
CES-13-51
This research studies the link between environmental regulation and plant level productivity in two U.S. manufacturing industries: pulp and paper mills and oil refineries using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models. Data on abatement spending, emissions and abated emissions are used in different DEA models to study plant productivity outcomes when accounting for abatement spending or emissions regulations. Results indicate that pulp and paper mills and oil refineries in the U.S. suffered decreases in productivity due to pollution abatement activities from 1974 to 2000. These losses in productivity are substantial but have been slowly trending downwards even when the regulations have tended to become more stringent and emission of pollutants has declined suggesting that the best practice has shifted over time. Results also show that the reported abatement expenditures are not able to explain all the losses arising out of regulation suggesting that these abatement expenditures are consistently under-reported.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperThe Life Cycle of Plants in India and Mexico
September 2012
Working Paper Number:
CES-12-20
In the U.S., the average 40 year old plant employs almost eight times as many workers as the typical plant five years or younger. In contrast, surviving Indian plants exhibit little growth in terms of either employment or output. Mexico is intermediate to India and the U.S. in these respects: the average 40 year old Mexican plant employs twice as many workers as an average new plant. This pattern holds across many industries and for formal and informal establishments alike. The divergence in plant dynamics suggests lower investments by Indian and Mexican plants in process efficiency, quality, and in accessing markets at home and abroad. In simple GE models, we find that the difference in life cycle dynamics could lower aggregate manufacturing productivity on the order of 25% in India and Mexico relative to the U.S.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperProductivity Dispersion and Plant Selection in the Ready-Mix Concrete Industry
September 2011
Working Paper Number:
CES-11-25
This paper presents a quantitative model of productivity dispersion to explain why inefficient producers are slowly selected out of the ready-mix concrete industry. Measured productivity dispersion between the 10th and 90th percentile falls from a 4 to 1 difference using OLS, to a 2 to 1 difference using a control function. Due to volatile productivity and high sunk entry costs, a dynamic oligopoly model shows that to rationalize small gaps in exit rates between high and low productivity plants, a plant in the top quintile must produce 1.5 times more than a plant in the bottom quintile.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperWage Dynamics along the Life-Cycle of Manufacturing Plants
August 2011
Working Paper Number:
CES-11-24R
This paper explores the evolution of average wage paid to employees along the life-cycle of a manufacturing plant in U.S. Average wage starts out low for a new plant and increases along with labor productivity, as the plant survives and ages. As a plant experiences productivity decline and approaches exit, average wage falls, but more slowly than it rises in the case of surviving new plants. Moreover, average wage declines slower than productivity does in failing plants, while it rises relatively faster as productivity increases in surviving new plants. These empirical regularities are studied in a dynamic model of labor quality and quantity choice by plants, where labor quality is reflected in wages. The model's parameters are estimated to assess the costs a plant incurs as it alters its labor quality and quantity in response to changes in its productivity over its life-cycle.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperSoft Information and Investment: Evidence from Plant-Level Data
October 2010
Working Paper Number:
CES-10-38R
A reduction in travel time between headquarters and plants makes it easier for headquarters to monitor plants and gather 'soft' information--i.e., information that cannot be transmitted through non-personal means. Using a difference-in-differences methodology, I find that the introduction of new airline routes that reduce the travel time between headquarters and plants leads to an increase in plant-level investment of 8% to 9% and an increase in plants' total factor productivity of 1.3% to 1.4%. Consistent with the notion that a reduction in travel time makes it easier for headquarters to monitor plants and gather soft information, I find that my results are stronger: i) for plants whose headquarters are more time constrained; ii) for plants operating in soft-information industries; iii) during the earlier years of my sample period, when alternative, non-personal, means of monitoring and transmitting information were less developed; iv) for plants where information uncertainty is likely to be greater and soft information is likely to be more valuable, such as smaller plants and peripheral plants operating in industries that are not the firm's main industry.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperLocal Environmental Regulation and Plant-Level Productivity
September 2010
Working Paper Number:
CES-10-30R
This paper examines the impact of environmental regulation on the productivity of manufacturing plants in the United States. Establishment-level data from three Censuses of Manufactures are used to estimate 3-factor Cobb-Douglas production functions that include a measure of the stringency of environmental regulation faced by manufacturing plants. In contrast to previous studies, this paper examines effects on plants in all manufacturing industries, not just those in 'dirty' industries. Further, this paper employs spatial-temporal variation in environmental compliance costs to identify effects, using a time-varying county-level index that is based on multiple years of establishment-level data from the Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures survey and the Annual Survey of Manufactures. Results suggest that, for the average manufacturing plant, the effect on productivity of being in a county with higher environmental compliance costs is relatively small and often not statistically significant. For the average plant, the main effect of environmental regulation may not be in the spatial and temporal dimensions.View Full Paper PDF
-
Working PaperLinking Investment Spikes and Productivity Growth: U.S. Food Manufacturing Industry
October 2008
Working Paper Number:
CES-08-36
We investigate the relationship between productivity growth and investment spikes using Census Bureau's plant-level data set for the U.S. food manufacturing industry. We find that productivity growth increases after investment spikes suggesting an efficiency gain or plants' learning effect. However, efficiency and the learning period associated with investment spikes differ among plants' productivity quartile ranks implying the differences in the plants' investment types such as expansionary, replacement or retooling. We find evidence of both convex and non-convex types of adjustment costs where lumpy plant-level investments suggest the possibility of non-convex adjustment costs and hazard estimation results suggest the possibility of convex adjustment costs. The downward sloping hazard can be due to the unobserved heterogeneity across plants such as plants' idiosyncratic obsolescence caused by different R&D capabilities and implies the existence of convex adjustment costs. Food plants frequently invest during their first few years of operation and high productivity plants postpone investing due to high fixed costs.View Full Paper PDF
