Papers Containing Keywords(s): 'labor'
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Viewing papers 241 through 250 of 255
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Working PaperMeasuring the Impact of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership
September 1996
Working Paper Number:
CES-96-08
In this paper, I measure the impact of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) on productivity and sales growth at manufacturing plants. To do this, I match MEP client data to the Census Bureau's Longitudinal Research Database (LRD). The LRD contains data for all manufacturing establishments in the U.S. and provides a number of measures of plant performance and characteristics that are measured consistently across plants and time. This facilitates valid comparisons between both client and non-client plants and among clients served by different MEP centers. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) administers the MEP as part of their effort to improve the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing. The program provides business and technical assistance to small and medium sized manufacturers much as agricultural extension does for farmers. The goal of the paper is to see if measures of plant performance (e.g., productivity and sales growth) are systematically related to participation in the MEP, while controlling for other factors that are known or thought to influence performance. Selection bias is often a problem in evaluation studies so I specify an econometric model that controls for selection. I estimate the model with data from 8 manufacturing extension centers in 2 states. The control group includes all plants from each state in the LRD. Preliminary results indicate that MEP participation is systematically related to productivity growth but not to sales growth.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperTechnology and Jobs: Secular Changes and Cyclical Dynamics
September 1996
Working Paper Number:
CES-96-07
In this paper, we exploit plant-level data for U.S. manufacturing for the 1970s and 1980s to explore the connections between changes in technology and the structure of employment and wages. We focus on the nonproduction labor share (measured alternatively by employment and wages) as the variable of interest. Our main findings are summarized as follows: (i) aggregate changes in the nonproduction labor share at annual and longer frequencies are dominated by within plant changes; (ii) the distribution of annual within plant changes exhibits a spike at zero, tremendous heterogeneity and fat left and right tails; (iii) within plant secular changes are concentrated in recessions; and (iv) while observable indicators of changes in technology account for a significant fraction of the secular increase in the average nonproduction labor share, unobservable factors account for most of the secular increase, most of the cyclical variation and most of the cross sectional heterogeneity.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperInterfirm Segregation and the Black/White Wage Gap
August 1996
Working Paper Number:
CES-96-06
This paper studies interfirm racial segregation in two newly developed firm-level databases. Within the representative MSA, we find that the interfirm distribution of black and white workers is close to what would be implied by the random assignment of workers to firms. However, we also find that black workers are systematically clustered in "black" employers where managers, owners, and customers are also black. These facts may be reconciled by the facts that a) there are not enough black employers to generate much segregation and that b) perhaps other difficult-to-identify forces serve to systematically integrate black and white workers. Finally, we find that the black/white wage gap is entirely a within-firm phenomenon, as blacks do not work in firms that pay low wages on average.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperSex Segregation in U.S. Manufacturing
June 1996
Working Paper Number:
CES-96-04
This paper studies interplant sex segregation in the U.S. manufacturing industry. The study differs from previous work in that we have detailed information on the characteristics of both workers and firms, and because we measure segregation in a new and better way. We report three main findings. First, there is a substantial amount of interplant sex segregation in the U.S. manufacturing industry, although segregation is far from complete. Second, we find that female managers tend to work in the same plants as female supervisees, even once we control for other plant characteristics. And finally, we find that interplant segregation can account for a substantial fraction of the male/female wage gap in the manufacturing industry, particularly among blue-collar workers.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Worker-Establishment Characteristics Database
June 1995
Working Paper Number:
CES-95-10
A data set combining information on the characteristics of both workers and their employers has long been a grail for labor economists. The reason for this interest is that while a number of theoretical models in labor economics stress the importance of employer-employee matching in determining labor market outcomes, almost all empirical work relies on either worker surveys with little information about employers or establishment surveys with little information about workers. The Worker-Establishment Characteristic Database (WECD) represents just such an employer-employee-matched database. Containing 199,557 manufacturing workers matched to 16,144 manufacturing establishments, the WECD is the largest worker-firm matched data set available for the U.S. This paper describes how this data set was constructed and assesses the usefulness of these data for economic research. In addition, I discuss some of the issues that can be addressed using employer-employee-matched data and plans for creating future versions of the WECD.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperTechnology Locks, Creative Destruction And Non-Convergence In Productivity Levels
April 1995
Working Paper Number:
CES-95-06
This paper presents a simple solution to a new model that seeks to explain the distribution of plants across productivity levels within an industry, and empirically confirms some key predictions using the U.S. textile industry. In the model, plants are locked into a given productivity level, until they exit or retool. Convex costs of adjustment captures the fact that more productive plants expand faster. Provided there is technical change, productivity levels do not converge; the model achieves persistent dispersion in productivity levels within the context of a distortion free competitive equilibrium. The equilibrium, however, is rather turbulent; plants continually come on line with the cutting edge technology, gradually expand and finally exit or retool when they cease to recover their variable costs. The more productive plants create jobs, while the less productive destroy them. The model establishes a close link between productivity growth and dispersion in productivity levels; more rapid productivity growth leads to more widespread dispersion. This prediction is empirically confirmed. Additionally, the model provides an explanation for S-shaped diffusion.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 PaperA Comparison of Job Creation and Job Destruction in Canada and the United States
May 1994
Working Paper Number:
CES-94-02
In recent years a growing number of countries have constructed data series on job creation and job destruction using establishment-level data sets. This paper provides a description and detailed comparison of these new data series for the United States and Canada. First, the Canadian and United States industry-level job creation and destruction data are remarkably similar. Industries with high (low) job creation in the US are evidenced by high (low) job creation in Canada. The same is true for job destruction. In addition, the overall magnitude of gross job flows in the two countries is comparable. Second, the time-series patterns of creation and destruction are qualitatively similar but do differ in a number of important respects. In both countries, job destruction is much more cyclically volatile than job creation. This cyclical asymmetry is, however, more pronounced in the United States. The paper finishes with a characterization of the job flow patterns using a modified Blanchard and Diamond (1992) model.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperRecent Twists of the Wage Structure and Technology Diffusion
March 1994
Working Paper Number:
CES-94-05
This paper is an empirical study of the impact on U.S. wage structure of domestic technology, foreign technology, and import penetration. A model is presented which combines factor proportions theory with a version of growth theory. The model, which assumes two levels of skill, suggests that domestic technology raises both wages, while foreign technology, on a simple interpretation, lowers both. Trade at a constant technology, as usual, lowers the wage of that class of labor used intensively by the affected industry, and raises the other wage. The findings support the predictions of the model for domestic technology. On the other hand, they suggest that technological change, and perhaps other factors, have obscured the role of factor proportions in the data. Indeed, foreign technology and trade have the same effect on wages at different skill levels, not the opposite effects suggested by factor proportions. Finally, a simple diffusion story, in which foreign technology lowers all U.S. wages, is also rejected. Instead, uniformly higher U.S. wages, not lower, appear to be associated with the technology and trade of the oldest trading partners of the U.S., the economies of the West. Not so for Asia, especially the smaller countries which have recently accelerated their trade with the U.S. Their effects are uniformly negative on wages, suggesting a distinction between shock and long run effects of foreign technology and trade.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
