Papers Containing Keywords(s): 'restructuring'
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Viewing papers 1 through 10 of 18
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Working PaperBankruptcy Spillovers
January 2017
Working Paper Number:
CES-17-16
How do different bankruptcy approaches affect the local economy? Using U.S. Census microdata at the establishment level, we explore the spillover effects of reorganization and liquidation on geographically proximate firms. We exploit the random assignment of bankruptcy judges as a source of exogenous variation in the probability of liquidation. We find that within a five year period, employment declines substantially in the immediate neighborhood of the liquidated establishments, relative to reorganized establishments. Most of the decline is due to lower growth of existing establishments and, to a lesser extent, reduced entry into the area. The spillover effects are highly localized and concentrate in the non-tradable and service sectors, particularly when the bankrupt firm operates in the same sector. These results suggest that liquidation leads to a reduction in consumer traffic to the local area and to a decline in knowledge spillovers between firms. The evidence is inconsistent with the notion that liquidation leads to creative destruction, as the removal of bankrupt businesses does not lead to increased entry nor the revitalization of the area.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperDoes Higher Productivity Dispersion Imply Greater Misallocation?A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis
January 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-42
Recent research maintains that the observed variation in productivity within industries reflects resource misallocation and concludes that large GDP gains may be obtained from market-liberalizing polices. Our theoretical analysis examines the impact on productivity dispersion of reallocation frictions in the form of costs of entry, operation, and restructuring, and shows that reforms reducing these frictions may raise dispersion of productivity across firms. The model does not imply a negative relationship between aggregate productivity and productivity dispersion. Our empirical analysis focuses on episodes of liberalizing policy reforms in the U.S. and six East European transition economies. Deregulation of U.S. telecommunications equipment manufacturing is associated with increased, not reduced, productivity dispersion, and every transition economy in our sample shows a sharp rise in dispersion after liberalization. Productivity dispersion under central planning is similar to that in the U.S., and it rises faster in countries adopting faster paces of liberalization. Lagged productivity dispersion predicts higher future productivity growth. The analysis suggests there is no simple relationship between the policy environment and productivity dispersion.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperImmigrant Diversity and Complex Problem Solving
January 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-04
In the growing literature exploring the links between immigrant diversity and worker productivity, recent evidence strongly suggests that diversity generates productivity improvements. However, even the most careful extant empirical work remains at some remove from the mechanisms that theory says underlie this relationship: interpersonal interaction in the service of complex problem solving. This paper aims to `stress-test' these theoretical foundations, by observing how the relationship between diversity and productivity varies across workers differently engaged in complex problem solving and interaction. Using a uniquely comprehensive matched employer-employee dataset for the United States between 1991 and 2008, this paper shows that growing immigrant diversity inside cities and workplaces offers much stronger benefits for workers intensively engaged in various forms of complex problem solving, including tasks involving high levels of innovation, creativity, and STEM. Moreover, such effects are considerably stronger for those whose work requires high levels of both problem solving and interaction.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperCreditor Control Rights and Resource Allocation within Firms
November 2015
Working Paper Number:
CES-15-39
We examine the within-firm resource allocation effects of creditor interventions and their relationship to performance gains at firms violating financial covenants. By linking firm-level data to establishment-level data from the U.S. Census Bureau, we show that covenant violations are followed by large reductions in employment and more frequent establishment sales and closures. These operational cuts are concentrated in violating firms' noncore business lines and unproductive establishments. We conclude that refocusing activities and improving productive efficiency are important mechanisms through which creditors enhance violating firms' performance.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Human Factor in Acquisitions: Cross-Industry Labor Mobility and Corporate Diversification
September 2015
Working Paper Number:
CES-15-31
Internal labor markets facilitate cross-industry worker reallocation and collaboration, and the resulting benefits are largest when the markets include industries that utilize similar worker skills. We construct a matrix of industry pair-wise human capital transferability using information obtained from more than 11 million job changes. We show that diversifying acquisitions occur more frequently among industry pairs with higher human capital transferability. Such acquisitions result in larger labor productivity gains and are less often undone in subsequent divestitures. Moreover, acquirers retain more high skill workers and they exploit the real option to move workers from the target firm to jobs in other industries inside the merged firm. Overall, our results identify human capital as a source of value from corporate diversification and provide an explanation for seemingly unrelated acquisitions.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperAntidumping Duties and Plant-Level Restructuring
December 2013
Working Paper Number:
CES-13-60
This paper examines the effect of antidumping duties on the restructuring activities of protected plants. Using a dataset that contains the full population of U.S. manufacturers, I find that protected plants increase their capital intensities modestly relative to unprotected plants, but only when antidumping duties have been in place for a sufficient duration. I find little effect of antidumping duties on a proxy for the skilled labor intensity of protected plants.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperTHE BRIGHT SIDE OF CORPORATE DIVERSIFICATION: EVIDENCE FROM INTERNAL LABOR MARKETS
August 2013
Working Paper Number:
CES-13-40
We estimate the labor market consequences of corporate diversification using worker-firm matched data from the U.S. Census Bureau. We find evidence that workers in diversified firms have greater cross-industry mobility. Displaced workers experience significantly smaller losses when they move to a firm in a new industry in which their former firm alsooperates. We also find more active internal labor markets in diversified firms. Diversified firms exploit the option to redeploy workers internally from declining to expanding industries. Though diversified firms pay higher wages to retain workers, their labor is also more productive than focused firms of the same size, age, and industry. Overall, internal labor markets provide a bright side to corporate diversification.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Transitional Costs of Sectoral Reallocation: Evidence from the Clean Air Act and the Workforce
January 2012
Working Paper Number:
CES-12-02
New environmental regulations lead to a rearrangement of production away from polluting industries, and workers in those industries are adversely affected. This paper uses linked worker-firm data in the United States to estimate the transitional costs associated with reallocating workers from newly regulated industries to other sectors of the economy. The focus on workers rather than industries as the unit of analysis allows me to examine previously unobserved economic outcomes such as non-employment and long run earnings losses from job transitions, both of which are critical to understanding the reallocative costs associated with these policies. Using panel variation induced by the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA), I find that the reallocative costs of environmental policy are significant. Workers in newly regulated plants experienced, in aggregate, more than $9 billion inforegone earnings for the years after the change in policy. Most of these costs are driven by non-employment and lower earnings in future employment, while earnings of workers who remain with their firm change little. Relative to the estimated benefits of the 1990 CAAA, these one-time transitional costs are small. However, the estimated costs far exceed the workforce compensation policies designed to mitigate some of these earnings losses.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperAcquiring Labor
October 2011
Working Paper Number:
CES-11-32
We present evidence that some firms pursue M&A activity with the objective of obtaining a larger workforce. Firms most likely to be acquired for their large labor force, firms with the largest ex ante employment, are associated with more positive post-merger employment outcomes. Moreover, we find this relation is strongest when acquiring labor outside of an M&A is likely to be most difficult, due to tight labor conditions, or most valuable, in high human capital industries. We further find that high employment target firms are associated with relatively greater post-merger wage increases and lower post-merger employee turnover. We find no evidence that the positive relation between target ex ante employment and ex post employment change is driven by target asset size, market capitalization, industry, profitability or acquirer characteristics. Our findings do not exclude the possibility that a different subset of M&A activity may be motivated to penalize managers who have tolerated over-employment. Indeed, we find evidence consistent with this disciplinary motivation when considering acquisitions of targets in declining industries.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperPost-Merger Restructuring and the Boundaries of the Firm
April 2011
Working Paper Number:
CES-11-11
We examine how firms redraw their boundaries after acquisitions using plant-level data. We find that there is extensive restructuring in a short period following mergers and full-firm acquisitions. Acquirers of full firms sell 27% and close 19% of the plants of target firms within three years of the acquisition. Acquirers with skill in running their peripheral divisions tend to retain more acquired plants. Retained plants increase in productivity whereas sold plants do not. These results suggest that acquirers restructure targets in ways that exploit their comparative advantage.View Full Paper PDF
