Papers Containing Keywords(s): 'plant'
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Wayne B Gray - 4
Viewing papers 11 through 19 of 19
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Working PaperIndustrial Spillovers in Developing Countries: Plant-level Evidence From Chile, Mexico, and Morocco
January 1998
Working Paper Number:
CES-98-01
This paper documents the procedure used to match firm-level data from the Quarterly Financial Reports (QFR) to plant-level (establishment) data from the Longitudinal Research Database (LRD). The resulting matched firms and their plants provide a link between a firm's financial structure and its manufacturing plants. The linked database provides a resource that researchers can use to examine the interaction of financial structure with firm decisions - including decisions such as employment, investment, mergers, and asset redeployment. Financial structure characteristics in the QFR include the composition and amount of debt claims.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperManufacturing Plant Location: Does State Pollution Regulation Matter?
July 1997
Working Paper Number:
CES-97-08
This paper tests whether differences across states in pollution regulation affect the location of manufacturing activity in the U.S. Plant-level data from the Census Bureau's Longitudinal Research Database is used to identify new plant births in each state over the 1963-1987 period. This is combined with several measures of state regulatory intensity, including business pollution abatement spending, regulatory enforcement activity, congressional pro-environment voting, and an index of state environmental laws. A significant connection is found: states with more stringent environmental regulation have fewer new manufacturing plants. These results persist across a variety of econometric specifications, and the strongest regulatory coefficients are similar in magnitude to thos4e on other factors expected to influence location, such as unionization rates. However, a subsample of high-pollution industries, which might have been expected to show much larger impacts, gets similar coefficients. This raises the possibility that differences between states other than environmental regulation might be influencing the results.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperProductivity Races II: The Issue of Capital Measurement
January 1997
Working Paper Number:
CES-97-03
This paper explores the role of capital measurement in determining the productivity of individual textile plants. In addition to gross book value of capital, we experiment with a perpetual inventory measure of capital and implicit (estimated) deflator associated with the age of the plant. Following the methodology of the earlier paper (Productivity Races I), we find that measures of productivity constructed from different measures of capital are highly correlated. Further, their association with alternative measures of economic performance is approximately the same. Nevertheless, the perpetual inventory measure of capital -- the most desirable measure from a theoretical perspective -- does consistently outperform the other two measures.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperProductivity Races I: Are Some Productivuty Measures Better Than Others?
January 1997
Working Paper Number:
CES-97-02
In this study we construct twelve different measures of productivity at the plant level and test which measures of productivity are most closely associated with direct measures of economic performance. We first examine how closely correlated these measures are with various measures of profits. We then evaluate the extent to which each productivity measure is associated with lower rates of plant closure and faster plant growth (growth in employment, output, and capital). All measures of productivity considered are credible in the sense that highly productive plants, regardless of measure, are clearly more profitable, less likely to close, and grow faster. Nevertheless, labor productivity and measures of total factor productivity that are based on regression estimates of production functions are better predictors of plant growth and survival than factor share-based measures of total factor productivity (TFP). Measures of productivity that are based on several years of data appear to outperform measures of productivity that are based solely on data from the most recent year.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Missing Link: Technology, Productivity, and Investment
October 1995
Working Paper Number:
CES-95-12
This paper examines the relationship between productivity, investment, and age for over 14,000 plants in the U.S. manufacturing sector in the 1972-1988 period. Productivity patterns vary significantly due to plant heterogeneity. Productivity first increases and then decreases with respect to plant age, and size and industry are systematically correlated with productivity and productivity growth. However, there is virtually no observable relationship between investment and productivity or productivity growth. Overall, the results indicate that plant heterogeneity and fixed effects are more important determinants of observable productivity patterns than sunk costs or capital reallocation. Key Words: productivity, investment, technical changeView Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperCapital Structure and Product Market Behavior: An Examination of Plant Exit and Investment Decisions
March 1995
Working Paper Number:
CES-95-04
This paper examines whether capital structure decisions interact with product market characteristics to influence plant closing and investment decisions. The empirical evidence in this paper shows that a firm's capital structure, plant level efficiency, and industry capacity utilization are significant determinants of plant (dis)investment decisions. We find that the effects of high leverage on investment and plant closing are significant when the industry is highly concentrated. Following their recapitalizations, firms in industries with high concentration are more likely to close plants and less likely to invest. In addition, we find that rival firms are less likely to close plants and more likely to invest when the market share of leveraged firms is higher.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperPollution Abatement Costs, Regulation And Plant-Level Productivity
December 1994
Working Paper Number:
CES-94-14
We analyze the connection between productivity, pollution abatement expenditures, and other measures of environmental regulation for plants in three industries (paper, oil, and steel). We examine data from 1979 to 1990, considering both total factor productivity levels and growth rates. Plants with higher abatement cost levels have significantly lower productivity levels. The magnitude of the impact is somewhat larger than expected: $1 greater abatement costs appears to be associated with the equivalent of $1.74 in lower productivity for paper mills, $1.35 for oil refineries, and $3.28 for steel mills. However, these results apply only to variation across plants in productivity levels. Estimates looking at productivity variation within plants over time, or estimates using productivity growth rates show a smaller (and insignificant) relationship between abatement costs and productivity. Other measures of environmental regulation faced by the plants (compliance status, enforcement activity, and emissions) are not significantly related to productivity.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperEXPORTERS, SKILL UPGRADING AND THE WAGE GAP*
November 1994
Working Paper Number:
CES-94-13
This paper examines plant level evidence on the increase in demand for non-production workers in U.S. manufacturing during the 1980's. The major finding is that increases in employment at exporting plants contribute heavily to the observed increase in relative demand for skilled labor in manufacturing during the period. Exporters account for almost all of the increase in the wage gap between high and low-skilled workers. Tests of the competing theories with plant level data show that demand changes associated with increased exports are strongly associated with the wage gap increases. Increases in plant technology are determinants of within plant skill-upgrading but not of the aggregate wage gap rise.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperOn Productivity and Plant Ownership Change: New Evidence From the LRD
November 1993
Working Paper Number:
CES-93-15
This paper investigates the questions of what type of establishment experiences ownership change, and how the transferred properties perform after acquisition. Are they the profitable operations suggested by Ravenscraft and Scherer (1986), or the poorly operating ones found by Lichtenberg and Siegel (1992)? Is the primary motive of ownership change the rehabilitation of low productivity plants as suggested by Lichtenberg and Siegel? Our empirical work is based on an unbalanced panel of 28,294 plants taken from the U.S. Bureau of the Census' Longitudinal Research Database ( LRD ). The data set provides complete coverage of the food manufacturing industry (SIC 20) for the period 1977-1987. Our principle findings are that (1) ownership change is generally associated with the transfer of plants with above average productivity, however, large plants, empirically, those with more than 200 employees, are more likely to be purchased than closed when they are performing poorly; and (2) transferred plants experience improvement in productivity performance following the ownership change.View Full Paper PDF
