Papers Containing Keywords(s): 'trend'
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Viewing papers 51 through 60 of 63
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Working PaperThe Margins of U.S. Trade (Long Version)
August 2009
Working Paper Number:
CES-09-18
Recent research in international trade emphasizes the importance of firms extensive margins for understanding overall patterns of trade as well as how firms respond to specific events such as trade liberalization. In this paper, we use detailed U.S. trade statistics to provide a broad overview of how the margins of trade contribute to variation in U.S. imports and exports across trading partners, types of trade (i.e., arm's-length versus related-party) and both short and long time horizons. Among other results, we highlight the differential behavior of related-party and arm's-length trade in response to the 1997 Asian financial crisis.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperEstimating Trends in U.S. Income Inequality Using the Current Population Survey: The Importance of Controlling for Censoring
August 2008
Working Paper Number:
CES-08-25
Using internal and public use March Current Population Survey (CPS) data, we analyze trends in US income inequality (1975'2004). We find that the upward trend in income inequality prior to 1993 significantly slowed thereafter once we control for top coding in the public use data and censoring in the internal data. Because both series do not capture trends at the very top of the income distribution, we use a multiple imputation approach in which values for censored observations are imputed using draws from a Generalized Beta distribution of the Second Kind (GB2) fitted to internal data. Doing so, we find income inequality trends similar to those derived from unadjusted internal data. Our trend results are generally robust to the choice of inequality index, whether Gini coefficient or other commonly-used indices. When we compare our best estimates of the income shares held by the richest tenth with those reported by Piketty and Saez (2003), our trends fairly closely match their trends, except for the top 1 percent of the distribution. Thus, we argue that if United States income inequality has been substantially increasing since 1993, such increases are confined to this very high income group.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperUsing Internal Current Population Survey Data to Reevaluate Trends in Labor Earnings Gaps by Gender, Race, and Education Level
July 2008
Working Paper Number:
CES-08-18
Most empirical studies of trends in labor earnings gaps by gender, race or education level are based on data from the public use March Current Population Survey (CPS). Using the internal March CPS, we show that inconsistent topcoding in the public use data will understate these gaps and inaccurately capture their trends. We create a cell mean series beginning in 1975 that provides the mean of all values above the topcode for each income source in the public use March CPS and better approximate earnings gaps found in the internal March CPS than was previously possible using publically available data.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperConsistent Cell Means for Topcoded Incomes in the Public Use March CPS (1976-2007)
March 2008
Working Paper Number:
CES-08-06
Using the internal March CPS, we create and in this paper distribute to the larger research community a cell mean series that provides the mean of all income values above the topcode for any income source of any individual in the public use March CPS that has been topcoded since 1976. We also describe our construction of this series. When we use this series together with the public use March CPS, we closely match the yearly mean income levels and income inequalities of the U.S. population found using the internal March CPS data.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperUsing the P90/P10 Index to Measure U.S. Inequality Trends with Current Population Survey Data: A View From Inside the Census Bureau Vaults
June 2007
Working Paper Number:
CES-07-17
The March Current Population Survey (CPS) is the primary data source for estimation of levels and trends in labor earnings and income inequality in the USA. Time-inconsistency problems related to top coding in theses data have led many researchers to use the ratio of the 90th and 10th percentiles of these distributions (P90/P10) rather than a more traditional summary measure of inequality. With access to public use and restricted-access internal CPS data, and bounding methods, we show that using P90/P10 does not completely obviate time inconsistency problems, especially for household income inequality trends. Using internal data, we create consistent cell mean values for all top-coded public use values that, when used with public use data, closely track inequality trends in labor earnings and household income using internal data. But estimates of longer-term inequality trends with these corrected data based on P90/P10 differ from those based on the Gini coefficient. The choice of inequality measure matters.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperVolatility and Dispersion in Business Growth Rates: Publicly Traded Versus Privately Held Firms
July 2006
Working Paper Number:
CES-06-17
We study the variability of business growth rates in the U.S. private sector from 1976 onwards. To carry out our study, we exploit the recently developed Longitudinal Business Database (LBD), which contains annual observations on employment and payroll for all U.S. businesses. Our central finding is a large secular decline in the cross sectional dispersion of firm growth rates and in the average magnitude of firm level volatility. Measured the same way as in other recent research, the employment-weighted mean volatility of firm growth rates has declined by more than 40% since 1982. This result stands in sharp contrast to previous findings of rising volatility for publicly traded firms in COMPUSTAT data. We confirm the rise in volatility among publicly traded firms using the LBD, but we show that its impact is overwhelmed by declining volatility among privately held firms. This pattern holds in every major industry group. Employment shifts toward older businesses account for 27 percent or more of the volatility decline among privately held firms. Simple cohort effects that capture higher volatility among more recently listed firms account for most of the volatility rise among publicly traded firms.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperEffect of Volatility Change on Product Diversification
October 2005
Working Paper Number:
CES-05-14
Studies of the volatility of the U.S. economy suggest a noticeable change in mid 1980s. There is some empirical evidence that the aggregate volatility of the U.S. economy has been decreasing over time. The response of firms to the change of economic volatility and economic fluctuation has been studied in terms of many margins a firm can adjust 'capital, labor, capacity, material, etc. However, we have not studied the most important margin ' the product. This paper studies the effect of profit volatility on the firm/plant level product diversification. Section 2 profiles diversification and shows that there is a downward trend of aggregate diversification in many industries. Cyclicality of diversification is not clear at the aggregate or industry level. Firms change their diversification very frequently and very differently from one another. Section 3 verifies the trend of volatility at the aggregate, sectoral, and firm level and studies the relationship between diversification and volatility at the firm level. Firm level diversification decreases as the aggregate, sectoral and idiosyncratic volatility decreases.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Longitudinal Business Database
July 2002
Working Paper Number:
CES-02-17
As the largest federal statistical agency and primary collector of data on businesses, households and individuals, the Census Bureau each year conducts numerous surveys intended to provide statistics on a wide range of topics about the population and economy of the United States. The Census Bureau's decennial population and quinquennial economic censuses are unique, providing information on all U.S. households and business establishments, respectively.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperCounty-Level Estimates of the Employment Prospects of Low-Skill Workers
July 2000
Working Paper Number:
CES-00-11
This study examines low-skill wage and employment opportunities for men and women at the county level over the period 1989-96. Currently, reliable direct measures of wages and employment rates for different demographic and skill groups are only available for large geographic areas such as regions and populous states or at infrequent intervals (e.g., from the Decennial Census) for some smaller areas. This study constructs indirect annual measures for all counties from 1989-96 by combining skill-specific information on earnings and employment from the Sample Edited Detail File (SEDF) of the 1990 Decennial Census and the 1990-97 Annual Demographic files of the Current Population Survey (CPS) with annual industry-specific information from the Regional Economic Information System (REIS). Special versions of the SEDF and CPS files that identify county of residence are used. The study regresses the low-skill wage and employment data from the SEDF and CPS files on a set of personal variables from the combined files and local employment measures derived from the REIS. The wage regressions are corrected for selectivity from the employment decision and account for county-specific effects as well as general time effects. Estimates from the regressions are then combined with the available employment data from the REIS to impute wage and employment rates for low-skill adults across counties.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Impact of Vintage and Survival on Productivity: Evidence from Cohorts of U.S. Manufacturing Plants
May 2000
Working Paper Number:
CES-00-06
This paper examines the evolution of productivity in U.S. manufacturing plants from 1963 to 1992. We define a 'vintage effect' as the change in productivity of recent cohorts of new plants relative to earlier cohorts of new plants, and a 'survival effect' as the change in productivity of a particular cohort of surviving plants as it ages. The data show that both factors contribute to industry productivity growth, but play offsetting roles in determining a cohort's relative position in the productivity distribution. Recent cohorts enter with significantly higher productivity than earlier entrants did, while surviving cohorts show significant increases in productivity as they age. These two effects roughly offset each other, however, so there is a rough convergence in productivity across cohorts in 1992 and 1987. (JEL Code: D24, L6)View Full Paper PDF
