Papers Containing Keywords(s): 'agency'
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Viewing papers 51 through 60 of 81
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Working PaperEmployer-to-Employer Flows in the United States: Estimates Using Linked Employer-Employee Data
September 2010
Working Paper Number:
CES-10-26
We use administrative data linking workers and firms to study employer-to-employer flows. After discussing how to identify such flows in quarterly data, we investigate their basic empirical patterns. We find that the pace of employer-to-employer flows is high, representing about 4 percent of employment and 30 percent of separations each quarter. The pace of employer-to-employer flows is highly procyclical, and varies systematically across worker, job and employer characteristics. Our findings regarding job tenure and earnings dynamics suggest that for those workers moving directly to new jobs, the new jobs are generally better jobs; however, this pattern is highly procyclical. There are rich patterns in terms of origin and destination of industries. We find somewhat surprisingly that more than half of the workers making employer-to-employer transitions switch even broadly-defined industries (NAICS supersectors).View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperProfessional Employer Organizations: What Are They, Who Uses Them and Why Should We Care?
September 2010
Working Paper Number:
CES-10-22
More and more U.S. workers are counted as employees of firms that they do not actually work for. Among such workers are those who staffed by temporary help service (THS) agencies and leased employees who are on the payroll of professional employment organizations (PEOs) but work for PEOs' client firms. While several papers study firms' use of THS services, few examine firms' use of PEO services. In this article, we summarize PEOs' business practices and examine how the intensity of their use varies across industries, geographic areas, and establishment characteristics using both public and confidential data.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Center for Economic Studies 1982-2007: A Brief History
October 2009
Working Paper Number:
CES-09-35
More than half a century ago, visionaries representing both the Census Bureau and the external research community laid the foundation for the Center for Economic Studies (CES) and the Research Data Center (RDC) system. They saw a clear need for a system meeting the inextricably related requirements of providing more and better information from existing Census Bureau data collections while preserving respondent confidentiality and privacy. CES opened in 1982 to house new longitudinal business databases, develop them further, and make them available to qualified researchers. CES and the RDC system evolved to meet the designers' requirements. Research at CES and the RDCs meets the commitments of the Census Bureau (and, recently, of other agencies) to preserving confidentiality while contributing paradigm-shifting fundamental research in a range of disciplines and up-to-the-minute critical tools for decision-makers.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperResolving the Tension Between Access and Confidentiality: Past Experience and Future Plans at the U.S. Census Bureau
September 2009
Working Paper Number:
CES-09-33
This paper provides an historical context for access to U.S. Federal statistical data with a primary focus on the U.S. Census Bureau. We review the various modes used by the Census Bureau to make data available to users, and highlight the costs and benefits associated with each. We highlight some of the specific improvements underway or under consideration at the Census Bureau to better serve its data users, as well as discuss the broad strategies employed by statistical agencies to respond to the challenges of data access.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperDiscretionary Disclosure in Financial Reporting: An Examination Comparing Internal Firm Data to Externally Reported Segment Data
September 2009
Working Paper Number:
CES-09-28
We use confidential, U.S. Census Bureau, plant-level data to investigate aggregation in external reporting. We compare firms' plant-level data to their published segment reports, conducting our tests by grouping a firm's plants that share the same four-digit SIC code into a 'pseudo-segment.' We then determine whether that pseudo-segment is disclosed as an external segment, or whether it is subsumed into a different business unit for external reporting purposes. We find pseudo-segments are more likely to be aggregated within a line-of-business segment when the agency and proprietary costs of separately reporting the pseudo-segment are higher and when firm and pseudo-segment characteristics allow for more discretion in the application of segment reporting rules. For firms reporting multiple external segments, aggregation of pseudo-segments is driven by both agency and proprietary costs. However, for firms reporting a single external segment, we find no evidence of an agency cost motive for aggregation.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperEconomic Factors Underlying the Unbundling of Advertising Agency Services
August 2009
Working Paper Number:
CES-09-15
This paper addresses a longstanding puzzle involving the unbundling of services that has occurred over more than two decades in the U.S. advertising agency industry: How can the shift from the bundling to the unbundling of services be explained and what accounts for the slow pace of change? Using a cost-based theoretical framework of bundling due to Evans and Salinger (2005, 2008), we develop a simple model of an advertising agency's decision to unbundle its services as a tradeoff between the fixed cost to the advertiser of establishing and maintaining a relationship with an advertising agency and pecuniary economies of scale available in providing media services. The results from an econometric analysis of cross-sectional and pooled data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau for quinquenial censuses conducted between 1982 and 2002 support the key predictions of the model. We find that advertising agency establishments are more likely to unbundle if they are large and diversified in their service offerings and are less likely to do so with increasing age and greater geographical scope. We also find a strong trend toward unbundling over time, a result that is partially explained by increases in media prices over time.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperAn Analysis of Key Differences in Micro Data: Results from the Business List Comparison Project
September 2008
Working Paper Number:
CES-08-28
The Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of the Census each maintain a business register, a universe of all U.S. business establishments and their characteristics, created from independent sources. Both registers serve critical functions such as supplying aggregate data inputs for certain national statistics generated by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. This paper examines key micro-level differences across these two business registers.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperHealth-Related Research Using Confidential U.S. Census Bureau Data
August 2008
Working Paper Number:
CES-08-21
Economic studies on health-related issues have the potential to benefit all Americans. The approaches for dealing with the growth of health care costs and health insurance coverage are ever changing and information is needed on their efficacy. Research on health-related topics has been conducted for about a decade at the Census Bureau\u2019s Center for Economic Studies and the Research Data Centers. This paper begins by describing the confidential business and demographic Census Bureau data products used in this research. The discussion continues with summaries of nearly 30 papers, including how this work has benefited the Census Bureau and its research findings. Some focus on data linkages and assessing data quality, while others address important questions in the employer, public, and individual insurance markets. This research could not have been accomplished with public-use data. The newly available data from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and National Center for Health Statistics, as well as additional Census Bureau data now available in the Research Data Centers are also discussed.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperAccess Methods for United States Microdata
August 2007
Working Paper Number:
CES-07-25
Beyond the traditional methods of tabulations and public-use microdata samples, statistical agencies have developed four key alternatives for providing non-government researchers with access to confidential microdata to improve statistical modeling. The first, licensing, allows qualified researchers access to confidential microdata at their own facilities, provided certain security requirements are met. The second, statistical data enclaves, offer qualified researchers restricted access to confidential economic and demographic data at specific agency-controlled locations. Third, statistical agencies can offer remote access, through a computer interface, to the confidential data under automated or manual controls. Fourth, synthetic data developed from the original data but retaining the correlations in the original data have the potential for allowing a wide range of analyses.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperLessons for Targeted Program Evaluation: A Personal and Professional History of the Survey of Program Dynamics
August 2007
Working Paper Number:
CES-07-24
The Survey of Program Dynamics (SPD) was created by the 1996 welfare reform legislation to facilitate its evaluation. This paper describes the evolution of that survey, discusses its implementation, and draws lessons for future evaluation. Large-scale surveys can be an important part of a portfolio of evaluation methods, but sufficient time must be given to data collection agencies if a high-quality longitudinal survey is expected. Such a survey must have both internal (agency) and external (policy analyst) buy-in. Investments in data analysis by agency staff, downplayed in favor of larger sample sizes given a fixed budget, could have contributed to more external acceptance. More attention up-front to reducing the potentially deleterious effects of attrition in longitudinal surveys, such as through the use of monetary incentives, might have been worthwhile. Given the problems encountered by the Census Bureau in producing the SPD, I argue that ongoing multi-purpose longitudinal surveys like the Survey of Income and Program Participation are potentially more valuable than episodic special-purpose surveys.View Full Paper PDF
