Papers Containing Keywords(s): 'census research'
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Viewing papers 31 through 36 of 36
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Working PaperFirms in International Trade
April 2007
Working Paper Number:
CES-07-14
Standard models of international trade devote little attention to firms. Yet of the 5.5 million firms operating in the United States in 2000, just 4 percent engaged in exporting, and the top 10 percent of these exporting firms accounted for 96 percent of U.S. exports. Since the mid 1990s, a large number of empirical studies have provided a wealth of information about the important role that firms play in mediating countries' imports and exports. This research, based on micro datasets that track countries' production and trade at the firm level, demonstrates that trading firms differ substantially from firms that solely serve the domestic market. Across a wide range of countries and industries, exporters have been shown to be larger, more productive, more skill- and capital-intensive, and to pay higher wages than non-trading firms.2 Furthermore, these differences exist even before exporting begins. The ex ante 'superiority' of exporters suggests self-selection: exporters are more productive, not as a result of exporting, but because only the most productive firms are able to overcome the costs of entering export markets. It is precisely this sort of microeconomic heterogeneity that grants firms the ability to influence macroeconomic outcomes. When trade policy barriers fall or transportation costs decline, high-productivity exporting firms survive and grow while lower-productivity non-exporting firms are more likely to fail. This reallocation of economic activity across firms raises aggregate productivity and provides a new source of welfare gains from trade. Confronting the challenges posed by the analysis of micro data has shifted the focus of the international trade field from countries and industries towards firms and products. We highlight these challenges with a detailed analysis of how trading firms differ from non-trading firms in the United States. We show how these differences serve as the foundation of a series of recent heterogeneous-firm models that offer new insights into the causes and consequences of international trade. We then introduce a new set of stylized facts that emerge from analysis of recently available U.S. customs data. These transaction-level trade data track all of the products imported and exported by the U.S. firms to all of its trading partners from 1992 to 2000. They show that the extensive margins of trade ' that is, the number of products firms trade as well as the number of countries they trade with ' are central to understanding the well-known role of distance in dampening aggregate trade flows. We conclude with suggestions for further theoretical and empirical research.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperUsing linked employer-employee data to investigate the speed of adjustments in downsizing firms
May 2006
Working Paper Number:
tp-2006-03
When firms are faced with a demand shock, adjustment can take many forms. Firms can adjust physical capital, human capital, or both. The speed of adjustment may differ as well: costs of adjustment, the type of shock, the legal and economic enviroment all matter. In this paper, we focus on firms that downsized between 1992 and 1997, but ultimately survive, and investigate how the human capital distribution within a firm influences the speed of adjustment, ceteris paribus. In other words, when do firms use mass layoffs instead of attrition to adjust the level of employment. We combine worker-level wage records and measures of human capital with firm-level characteristics of the production function, and use levels and changes in these variables to characterize the choice of adjustment method and speed. Firms are described/compared up to 9 years prior to death. We also consider how workers fare after leaving downsizing firms, and analyze if observed differences in post-separation outcomes of workers provide clues to the choice of adjustment speed.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperPlace of Work and Place of Residence: Informal Hiring Networks and Labor Market Outcomes
October 2005
Working Paper Number:
CES-05-23
We use a novel dataset and research design to empirically detect the effect of social interactions among neighbors on labor market outcomes. Specifically, using Census data that characterize residential and employment locations down to the city block, we examine whether individuals residing in the same block are more likely to work together than those in nearby blocks. We find evidence of significant social interactions operating at the block level: residing on the same versus nearby blocks increases the probability of working together by over 33 percent. The results also indicate that this referral effect is stronger when individuals are similar in sociodemographic characteristics (e.g., both have children of similar ages) and when at least one individual is well attached to the labor market. These findings are robust across various specifications intended to address concerns related to sorting and reverse causation. Further, having determined the characteristics of a pair of individuals that lead to an especially strong referral effect, we provide evidence that the increased availability of neighborhood referrals has a significant impact on a wide range of labor market outcomes including employment and wages.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperNetworking Off Madison Avenue
October 2005
Working Paper Number:
CES-05-15
This paper examines the effect on productivity of having more near advertising agency neighbors and hence better opportunities for meetings and exchange within Manhattan. We will show that there is extremely rapid spatial decay in the benefits of having more near neighbors even in the close quarters of southern Manhattan, a finding that is new to the empirical literature and indicates our understanding of scale externalities is still very limited. The finding indicates that having a high density of commercial establishments is important in enhancing local productivity, an issue in Lucas and Rossi-Hansberg (2002), where within business district spatial decay of spillovers plays a key role. We will argue also that in Manhattan advertising agencies trade-off the higher rent costs of being in bigger clusters nearer 'centers of action', against the lower rent costs of operating on the 'fringes' away from high concentrations of other agencies. Introducing the idea of trade-offs immediately suggests heterogeneity is involved. We will show that higher quality agencies are the ones willing to pay more rent to locate in greater size clusters, specifically because they benefit more from networking. While all this is an exploration of neighborhood and networking externalities, the findings relate to the economic anatomy of large metro areas like New Yorkthe nature of their buzz.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperLarge Plant Data in the LRD: Selection of a Sample for Estimation
March 1999
Working Paper Number:
CES-99-06
This paper describes preliminary work with the LRD during our tenure at the Census Bureau as participants in the ASA/NSF/Census Research Program. The objective of the work described here were two-fold. First, we wanted to examine the suitableness of these data for the calculation of plant-level productivity indexes, following procedures typically implemented with time series data. Second, we wanted to select a small number of 2-digit industry groups that would be well suited to the estimation of production functions and systems of factor share equations and factor demand forecasting equations with system-wide techniques. This description of our initial work may be useful to other researchers who are interested in the LRD for the analysis of productivity growth and/or the estimation of systems of factor equations, because the specific results reported in this memo suggest that the data are of good quality, or because the nature of the tasks undertaken provides insight into issues that arise in the analysis of longitudinal establishment data.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Longitudinal Research Database (LRD): Status And Research Possibilities
July 1988
Working Paper Number:
CES-88-02
This paper discusses the development and use of the Longitudinal Research Data available at the Center for Economic Studies of the Bureau of the Census in terms of what has been accomplished thus far, what projects are currently in progress, and what plans are in place for the near future. The major achievement to date is the construction of the database itself, which contains data for manufacturing establishments collected by the Census in 1963, 1967, 1972, 1977 and 1982, and the Annual Survey of Manufactures for non-Census years from 1973 to 1985. These data now reside in the Center's computer in a consistent format across all years. In addition, a large software development task that greatly simplifies the task of selecting subsets of the database for specific research projects is well underway. Finally, a number of powerful microcomputers have been purchased for use by researchers for their statistical analysis. Current efforts underway at the Center include research on such policy-relevant issues as mergers and their impact on profits and production, high technology trade, import competition, plant level productivity, entry and exit, and productivity differences between large and small firms. Due to the confidentiality requirements of the Census data, most of their research is performed by Center staff and Special Sworn Employees. Under certain circumstances, the Center accepts user-written programs from outside researchers. These routines are executed by Center staff, and the resultant output is reviewed thoroughly for disclosure problems. The Center is also an active member of a task force working on methods on release "masked" or "cloned" microdata in public-use files that will protect the confidentiality of the data while at the same time provide a research tool for outside users. The Center research program contributes directly to future research possibilities. The current batch of research projects is adding insight into the nature of the LRD database. This information is continually being incorporated into the Center's software system, thus facilitating yet more research activity. Moreover, since a good portion of the research involves linking the Longitudinal Research Data to other data files, such as the NSF/Census R&D data, the scope of the databases is continually being expanded. Furthermore, the Center is exploring the possibility of linking the demographic data collected by the Census Bureau to the LRD database.View Full Paper PDF
