Papers Containing Keywords(s): 'estimating'
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Viewing papers 131 through 140 of 174
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Working PaperPollution Abatement Expenditures and Plant-Level Productivity: A Production Function Approach
August 2003
Working Paper Number:
CES-03-16
In this paper, we investigate the impact of environmental regulation on productivity using a Cobb-Douglas production function framework. Estimating the effects of regulation on productivity can be done with a top-down approach using data for broad sectors of the economy, or a more disaggregated bottom-up approach. Our study follows a bottom-up approach using data from the U.S. paper, steel, and oil industries. We measure environmental regulation using plant-level information on pollution abatement expenditures, which allows us to distinguish between productive and abatement expenditures on each input. We use annual Census Bureau information (1979-1990) on output, labor, capital, and material inputs, and pollution abatement operating costs and capital expenditures for 68 pulp and paper mills, 55 oil refineries, and 27 steel mills. We find that pollution abatement inputs generally contribute little or nothing to output, especially when compared to their '''productive''' equivalents. Adding an aggregate pollution abatement cost measure to a Cobb-Douglas production function, we find that a $1 increase in pollution abatement costs leads to an estimated productivity decline of $3.11, $1.80, and $5.98 in the paper, oil, and steel industries respectively. These findings imply substantial differences across industries in their sensitivity to pollution abatement costs, arguing for a bottom-up approach that can capture these differences. Further differentiating plants by their production technology, we find substantial differences in the impact of pollution abatement costs even within industries, with higher marginal costs at plants with more polluting technologies. Finally, in all three industries, plants concentrating on change-in-production-process abatement techniques have higher productivity than plants doing predominantly end-of-line abatement, but also seem to be more affected by pollution abatement operating costs. Overall, our results point to the importance using detailed, disaggregated analyses, even below the industry level, when trying to model the costs of forcing plants to reduce their emissions.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Role of Technological and Industrial Heterogeneity In Technology Diffusion: a Markovian Approach
February 2003
Working Paper Number:
CES-03-07
Recent empirical studies have established the importance of intra and inter-industry heterogeneity in investment in innovation and other outcomes. This paper examines the role of industry and technology heterogeneity in the diffusion of advanced manufacturing technologies from a simple Markovian approach. Using the Maximum Entropy estimator, I estimate transition probabilities and corresponding half-lives, look for outliers in technology and industry diffusion patterns, and try to find explanations of their unusual behavior in idiosyncratic technology and industry characteristics. A consistent industry-level pattern that emerged is one that relates consumer demand and production processes. It seems that in industries where hand-made products are a sign of quality to the customer, technology spreads very slowly. On the other hand, in industries where demand for sophisticated, high-precision goods is high or in industries where demand-driven product specifications vary quite rapidly over relatively short periods of time, advanced technologies diffuse much more rapidly.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Survival of Industrial Plants
October 2002
Working Paper Number:
CES-02-25
The study seeks to explain the attrition rate of new manufacturing plants in the United States in terms of three vectors of variables. The first explains how survival of the fittest proceeds through learning by firms (plants) about their own relative efficiency. The second explains how efficiency systematically changes over time and what augments or diminishes it. The third captures the opportunity cost of resources employed in a plant. The model is tested using maximum-likelihood probit analysis with very large samples for successive census years in the 1967-97 period. One sample consists of an unbalanced panel of about three-fourths of a million plants of single and multi-unit firms, or alternatively of about 300,000 plants if only the most reliable data are considered. The second is restricted to the plants of multi-unit firms in the same time span and consists of an unbalanced panel of more than 100,000 plants. The empirical analysis strongly confirms the predictions of the model.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperAgent Heterogeneity and Learning: An Application to Labor Markets
October 2002
Working Paper Number:
tp-2002-20
I develop a matching model with heterogeneous workers, rms, and worker-firm matches, and apply it to longitudinal linked data on employers and employees. Workers vary in their marginal product when employed and their value of leisure when unemployed. Firms vary in their marginal product and cost of maintaining a vacancy. The marginal product of a worker-firm match also depends on a match-specific interaction between worker and rm that I call match quality. Agents have complete information about worker and rm heterogeneity, and symmetric but incomplete information about match quality. They learn its value slowly by observing production outcomes. There are two key results. First, under a Nash bargain, the equilibrium wage is linear in a person-specific component, a firm-specific component, and the posterior mean of beliefs about match quality. Second, in each period the separation decision depends only on the posterior mean of beliefs and person and rm characteristics. These results have several implications for an empirical model of earnings with person and rm e ects. The rst implies that residuals within a worker-firm match are a martingale; the second implies the distribution of earnings is truncated. I test predictions from the matching model using data from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) Program at the US Census Bureau. I present both xed and mixed model specifications of the equilibrium wage function, taking account of structural aspects implied by the learning process. In the most general specification, earnings residuals have a completely unstructured covariance within a worker-firm match. I estimate and test a variety of more parsimonious error structures, including the martingale structure implied by the learning process. I nd considerable support for the matching model in these data.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperEstimating Measurement Error in SIPP Annual Job Earnings: A Comparison of Census Survey and SSA Administrative Data
September 2002
Working Paper Number:
tp-2002-24
The third chapter investigates measurement error in SIPP annual job earnings data linked to SSA administrative earnings data. The multiple earnings measures provided by the survey and administrative data enable the identification of components of true variation and variation due to measurement error. We find that 18% of the variation in SIPP annual job earnings can be attributed to measurement error. We also find that in both the SIPP and the DER, measurement error is persistent over time. A lower level of auto-correlation in the SIPP measurement error than in the economic error component leads to a lower reliability ratio of .62 for first-differenced earnings.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Mis-Measurement of Permanent Earnings: New Evidence from Social Security Earnings Data
May 2002
Working Paper Number:
CES-02-12
This study investigates the reliability of using short-term averages of earnings as a proxy for permanent earnings in empirical research. An earnings dynamics model is estimated on a large sample of men covering the period from 1983 to 1997 following the cohort-based methodology of Baker and Solon (1999). The analysis uses a unique dataset that matches men in the 1984, 1990 and 1996 Surveys of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to the Social Security Administration's Summary Earnings Records (SER). The results confirm that using a short-term average of earnings can lead to spurious estimates of the effect of lifetime earnings on a particular outcome. In addition, the transitory variance appears to vary considerably over the lifecycle. The share of earnings variance due to transitory factors is higher among blacks and the persistence of transitory shocks appears to be greater for this group as well. Finally, the transitory variance appears to be a more important factor in explaining the overall earnings variance of college educated men than those without college.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Measurement of Human Capital in the U.S. Economy
April 2002
Working Paper Number:
tp-2002-09
We develop a new approach to measuring human capital that permits the distinction of both observable and unobservable dimensions of skill by associating human capital with the portable part of an individual's wage rate. Using new large-scale, integrated employer-employee data containing information on 68 million individuals and 3.6 million firms, we explain a very large proportion (84%) of the total variation in wages rates and attribute substantial variation to both individual and employer heterogeneity. While the wage distribution remained largely unchanged between 1992-1997, we document a pronounced right shift in the overall distribution of human capital. Most workers entering our sample, while less experienced, were otherwise more highly skilled, a difference which can be attributed almost exclusively to unobservables. Nevertheless, compared to exiters and continuers, entrants exhibited a greater tendency to match to firms paying below average internal wages. Firms reduced employment shares of low skilled workers and increased employment shares of high skilled workers in virtually every industry. Our results strongly suggest that the distribution of human capital will continue to shift to the right, implying a continuing up-skilling of the employed labor force.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperWithin and Between Firm Changes in Human Capital, Technology, and Productivity Preliminary and incomplete
December 2001
Working Paper Number:
tp-2001-03
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Working PaperPlant Vintage, Technology, and Environmental Regulation
September 2001
Working Paper Number:
CES-01-08
Does the impact of environmental regulation differ by plant vintage and technology? We answer this question using annual Census Bureau information on 116 pulp and paper mills' vintage, technology, productivity, and pollution abatement operating costs for 1979-1990. We find a significant negative relationship between pollution abatement costs and productivity levels. This is due almost entirely to integrated mills (those incorporating a pulping process), where a one standard deviation increase in abatement costs is predicted to reduce productivity by 5.4 percent. Older plants appear to have lower productivity but are less sensitive to abatement costs, perhaps due to 'grandfathering' of regulations. Mills which undergo renovations are also less sensitive to abatement costs, although these vintage and renovation results are not generally significant. We find similar results using a log-linear version of a three input Cobb-Douglas production function in which we include our technology, vintage, and renovation variables. Sample calculations of the impact of pollution abatement on productivity show the importance of allowing for differences based on plant technology. In a model incorporating technology interactions we estimate that total pollution abatement costs reduce productivity levels by an average of 4.7 percent across all the plants. The comparable estimate without technology interactions is 3.3 percent, approximately 30% lower.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperAn Economist's Primer on Survey Samples
September 2000
Working Paper Number:
CES-00-15
Survey data underlie most empirical work in economics, yet economists typically have little familiarity with survey sample design and its effects on inference. This paper describes how sample designs depart from the simple random sampling model implicit in most econometrics textbooks, points out where the effects of this departure are likely to be greatest, and describes the relationship between design-based estimators developed by survey statisticians and related econometric methods for regression. Its intent is to provide empirical economists with enough background in survey methods to make informed use of design-based estimators. It emphasizes surveys of households (the source of most public-use files), but also considers how surveys of businesses differ. Examples from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth of 1979 and the Current Population Survey illustrate practical aspects of design-based estimation.View Full Paper PDF
