Papers Containing Keywords(s): 'manufacturing'
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Viewing papers 91 through 100 of 246
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Working PaperProduct Quality and Firm Heterogeneity in International Trade
March 2013
Working Paper Number:
CES-13-08
I develop and implement a methodology for obtaining plant-level estimates of product quality from revenue and physical output data. Intuitively, firms that sell large quantities of output conditional on price are classified as high quality producers. I use this method to decompose cross-plant variation in price and export status into a quality and an efficiency margin. The empirical results show that prices are increasing in quality and decreasing in efficiency. However, selection into exporting is driven mainly by quality. The finding that changes in quality and efficiency have different impact on the firm's export decision is shown to be inconsistent with the traditional iceberg trade cost formulation and points to the importance of per unit transport costs.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperMeasuring The Impact Of The Toxics Release Inventory: Evidence From Manufacturing Plant Births
March 2013
Working Paper Number:
CES-13-07
The Toxics Release Inventory was the first major initiative to take a disclosurebased approach to environmental regulation and has served as the model for several other disclosure-based environmental policies. Yet the magnitude of its direct impacts on industrial manufacturing outcomes has not been established. I use Census Bureau micro-data to estimate the impacts of the Toxics Release Inventory on the opening of new manufacturing plants. I find that on average, counties that were found to be among the dirtiest in the country, in terms of toxic emissions, experienced a decrease in 'dirty' plant births and an even larger increase in 'clean' plant births. Furthermore, the magnitude of this shift is closely related to per capita income in the affected coun- ties - the effect is strongest in high-income communities and is reversed in low-income communities. I discuss the implications for information-based environmental policies.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperReallocation and Technology: Evidence From The U.S. Steel Industry
March 2013
Working Paper Number:
CES-13-06
We measure the impact of a drastic new technology for producing steel -- the minimill -- on the aggregate productivity of U.S. steel producers, using unique plant-level data between 1963 and 2002. We find that the sharp increase in the industry's productivity is linked to this new technology, and operates through two distinct mechanisms. First, minimills displaced the older technology, called vertically integrated production, and this reallocation of output was responsible for a third of the increase in the industry's productivity. Second, increased competition, due to the expansion of minimills, drove a substantial reallocation process within the group of vertically integrated producers, driving a resurgence in their productivity, and consequently of the industry's productivity as a whole.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperTechnology and Production Fragmentation: Domestic versus Foreign Sourcing
January 2013
Working Paper Number:
CES-13-35R
This paper provides direct empirical evidence on the relationship between technology and firms' global sourcing strategies. Using new data on U.S. firms' decisions to contract for manufacturing services from domestic or foreign suppliers, I show that a firm's adoption of communication technology between 2002 to 2007 is associated with a 3.1 point increase in its probability of fragmentation. The effect of firm technology also differs significantly across industries; in 2007, it is 20 percent higher, relative to the mean, in industries with production specifications that are easier to codify in an electronic format. These patterns suggest that technology lowers coordination costs, though its effect is disproportionately higher for domestic rather than foreign sourcing. The larger impact on domestic fragmentation highlights its importance as an alternative to offshoring, and can be explained by complementarities between technology and worker skill. High technology firms and industries are more likely to source from high human capital countries, and the differential impact of technology across industries is strongly increasing in country human capital.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperDo Environmental Regulations Disproportionately Affect Small Businesses? Evidence from the Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures Survey
September 2012
Working Paper Number:
CES-12-25R
It remains an open question whether the impact of environmental regulations differs by the size of the business. Such differences might be expected because of statutory, enforcement, and/or compliance asymmetries. Here, we consider the net effect of these three asymmetries, by estimating the relationship between plant size and pollution abatement expenditures, using establishment-level data on U.S. manufacturers from the Census Bureau's Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures (PACE) surveys of 1974-1982, 1984-1986, 1988-1994, 1999, and 2005, combined with data from the Annual Survey of Manufactures and Census of Manufactures. We model establishments' PAOC intensity - that is, their pollution abatement operating costs per unit of economic activity - as a function of establishment size, industry, and year. Our results show that PAOC intensity increases with establishment size. We also find that larger firms spend more per unit of output than do smaller firms.View Full Paper PDF
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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
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Working PaperEvaluating the Impact of MEP Services on Establishment Performance: A Preliminary Empirical Investigation
July 2012
Working Paper Number:
CES-12-15
This work examines the impact of manufacturing extension services on establishment productivity. It builds on an earlier study conducted by Jarmin in the 1990s, by matching the Census of Manufacturers (CMF) with the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) customer and activity datasets to generate treatment and comparison groups for analysis. The scope of the study is the period 1997 to 2002, which was a period of economic downturn in the manufacturing sector and budgetary challenges for the MEP. The paper presents some preliminary findings from this analysis. Both lagged dependent variable (LDV) and difference in difference (DiD) models are employed to estimate the relationship between manufacturing extension and labor productivity. The results presented are inconclusive and paint a mixed picture as they demonstrate the benefits and limitations of using Census microdata in program evaluation. They also point to the need to conduct analyses that could help to better understand the dynamic impact of MEP services.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperMaterials Prices and Productivity
June 2012
Working Paper Number:
CES-12-11
There is substantial within-industry variation, even within industries that use and produce homogeneous inputs and outputs, in the prices that plants pay for their material inputs. I explore, using plant-level data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the consequences and sources of this variation in materials prices. For a sample of industries with relatively homogeneous products, the standard deviation of plant-level productivities would be 7% lower if all plants faced the same materials prices. Moreover, plant-level materials prices are both persistent across time and predictive of exit. The contribution of net entry to aggregate productivity growth is smaller for productivity measures that strip out di'erences in materials prices. After documenting these patterns, I discuss three potential sources of materials price variation: geography, di'erences in suppliers. marginal costs, and suppliers. price discriminatory behavior. Together, these variables account for 13% of the dispersion of materials prices. Finally, I demonstrate that plants.marginal costs are correlated with the marginal costs of their intermediate input suppliers.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperAgglomerative Forces and Cluster Shapes
June 2012
Working Paper Number:
CES-12-09
We model spatial clusters of similar firms. Our model highlights how agglomerative forces lead to localized, individual connections among firms, while interaction costs generate a defined distance over which attraction forces operate. Overlapping firm interactions yield agglomeration clusters that are much larger than the underlying agglomerative forces themselves. Empirically, we demonstrate that our model's assumptions are present in the structure of technology and labor flows within Silicon Valley and its surrounding areas. Our model further identifies how the lengths over which agglomerative forces operate influence the shapes and sizes of industrial clusters; we confirm these predictions using variations across both technology clusters and industry agglomeration.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Spatial Extent of Agglomeration Economies: Evidence from Three U.S. Manufacturing Industries
January 2012
Working Paper Number:
CES-12-01
The spatial extent of localized agglomeration economies constitutes one of the central current questions in regional science. It is crucial for understanding firm location decisions and for assessing the influence of proximity in shaping spatial patterns of economic activity, yet clear-cut answers are difficult to come by. Theoretical work often fails to define or specify the spatial dimension of agglomeration phenomena. Existing empirical evidence is far from consistent. Most sources of data on economic performance do not supply micro-level information containing usable geographic locations. This paper provides evidence of the distances across which distinct sources of agglomeration economies generate benefits for plants belonging to three manufacturing industries in the United States. Confidential data from the Longitudinal Research Database of the United States Census Bureau are used to estimate cross-sectional production function systems at the establishment level for three contrasting industries in three different years. Along with relevant establishment, industry, and regional characteristics, the production functions include variables that indicate the local availability of potential labor and supply pools and knowledge spillovers. Information on individual plant locations at the county scale permits spatial differentiation of the agglomeration variables within geographic regions. Multiple distance decay profiles are investigated in order to explore how modifying the operationalization of proximity affects indicated patterns of agglomeration externalities and interfirm interactions. The results imply that industry characteristics are at least as important as the type of externality mechanism in determining the spatial pattern of agglomeration benefits. The research methods borrow from earlier work by the author that examines the relationships between regional industrial structure and manufacturing production.View Full Paper PDF
