Papers Containing Keywords(s): 'expenditure'
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Authors
Randy Becker - 11
Alice Zawacki - 11
Ronald J Shadbegian - 10
John Haltiwanger - 10
Wayne B Gray - 9
Viewing papers 81 through 90 of 170
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Working PaperThe Cyclicality of Productivity Dispersion
May 2011
Working Paper Number:
CES-11-15
Using plant-level data, I show that the dispersion of total factor productivity in U.S. durable manufacturing is greater in recessions than in booms. This cyclical property of productivity dispersion is much less pronounced in non-durable manufacturing. In durables, this phenomenon primarily reflects a relatively higher share of unproductive firms in a recession. In order to interpret these findings, I construct a business cycle model where production in durables requires a fixed input. In a boom, when the market price of this fixed input is high, only more productive firms enter and only more productive incumbents survive, which results in a more compressed productivity distribution. The resulting higher average productivity in durables endogenously translates into a lower average relative price of durables. Additionally, my model is consistent with the following business cycle facts: procyclical entry, procyclical aggregate total factor productivity, more procyclicality in durable than non-durable output, procyclical employment and countercyclicality in the relative price of durables and the cross section of stock returns.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperDoes the Retirement Consumption Puzzle Differ Across the Distribution?
March 2011
Working Paper Number:
CES-11-09R
Previous research has repeatedly found a puzzling one-time drop in the mean and median of consumption at retirement, contrary to the predictions of the life-cycle hypothesis. However, very little is known as to whether these effects vary across the consumption distribution. This study expands upon the previous work by examining changes in the consumption distribution between the non-retired and the retired using quantile regression techniques on pseudo-cohorts from the cross-sectional data of the 1990-2007 Consumer Expenditure Survey. The results indicate that there are insignificant changes between these groups at the lower end of the consumption distribution, while there are significant decreases at the higher end of this distribution. In addition, these changes in the distribution are gradually larger in magnitude when moving from the lower end to the higher end, which is found using several different measures of consumption. Work-related expenditures are instead shown to decrease uniformly across the consumption distribution. This evidence reveals that there is a progressive distributional component to the retirement consumption puzzle.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperAssessing the Incidence and Efficiency of a Prominent Place Based Policy
February 2011
Working Paper Number:
CES-11-07
This paper empirically assesses the incidence and efficiency of Round I of the federal urban Empowerment Zone (EZ) program using confidential microdata from the Decennial Census and the Longitudinal Business Database. Using rejected and future applicants to the EZ program as controls, we find that EZ designation substantially increased employment in zone neighborhoods and generated wage increases for local workers without corresponding increases in population or the local cost of living. The results suggest the efficiency costs of first Round EZs were relatively small.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperSoft Information and Investment: Evidence from Plant-Level Data
October 2010
Working Paper Number:
CES-10-38R
A reduction in travel time between headquarters and plants makes it easier for headquarters to monitor plants and gather 'soft' information--i.e., information that cannot be transmitted through non-personal means. Using a difference-in-differences methodology, I find that the introduction of new airline routes that reduce the travel time between headquarters and plants leads to an increase in plant-level investment of 8% to 9% and an increase in plants' total factor productivity of 1.3% to 1.4%. Consistent with the notion that a reduction in travel time makes it easier for headquarters to monitor plants and gather soft information, I find that my results are stronger: i) for plants whose headquarters are more time constrained; ii) for plants operating in soft-information industries; iii) during the earlier years of my sample period, when alternative, non-personal, means of monitoring and transmitting information were less developed; iv) for plants where information uncertainty is likely to be greater and soft information is likely to be more valuable, such as smaller plants and peripheral plants operating in industries that are not the firm's main industry.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperCharacteristics of the Top R&D Performing Firms in the U.S.: Evidence from the Survey of Industrial R&D
September 2010
Working Paper Number:
CES-10-33
Innovation drives economic growth and productivity growth, and as such, indicators of innovative activity such as research and development (R&D) expenditures are of paramount importance. We combine Census confidential microdata from two sources in order to examine the characteristics of the top R&D performing firms in the U.S. economy. We use the Survey of Industrial Research and Development (SIRD) to identify the top 200 R&D performing firms in 2003 and, to the extent possible, to trace the evolution of these firms from 1957 to 2007. The Longitudinal Business Database (LBD) further extends our knowledge about these firms and enables us to make comparisons to the U.S. economy. By linking the SIRD and the LBD we are able to create a detailed portrait of the evolution of the top R&D performing firms in the U.S.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperLocal Environmental Regulation and Plant-Level Productivity
September 2010
Working Paper Number:
CES-10-30R
This paper examines the impact of environmental regulation on the productivity of manufacturing plants in the United States. Establishment-level data from three Censuses of Manufactures are used to estimate 3-factor Cobb-Douglas production functions that include a measure of the stringency of environmental regulation faced by manufacturing plants. In contrast to previous studies, this paper examines effects on plants in all manufacturing industries, not just those in 'dirty' industries. Further, this paper employs spatial-temporal variation in environmental compliance costs to identify effects, using a time-varying county-level index that is based on multiple years of establishment-level data from the Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures survey and the Annual Survey of Manufactures. Results suggest that, for the average manufacturing plant, the effect on productivity of being in a county with higher environmental compliance costs is relatively small and often not statistically significant. For the average plant, the main effect of environmental regulation may not be in the spatial and temporal dimensions.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperA Dynamic Structural Model of Contraceptive Use and Employment Sector Choice for Women in Indonesia
September 2010
Working Paper Number:
CES-10-28
This research investigates the impact of the Indonesian family planning program on the labor force participation decisions and contraceptive choices of women. I develop a discrete choice dynamic structural model, where each married woman in every period makes joint choices regarding the method of contraceptive used and the sector of employment in which to work in order to maximize her expected discounted lifetime utility function. Each woman obtains utility from pecuniary sources, nonpecuniary sources, and choice-specific time shocks. In addition to the random shocks, there is uncertainty in the model as a woman can only imperfectly control her fertility. Dynamics in the model are captured by several forms of state and duration dependence. Women in this model make different choices due to different preferences, differences in observable characteristics, and realization of uncertainty. The choices made by a woman depend on the compatibility between raising children and the sector of employment (including wages). While making decisions regarding contraceptive use, a woman considers the trade-off between costs (monetary and nonmonetary) of having a child and the benefits from having one. The primary source of data for this study is the first wave of the Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS 1), a retrospective panel. In my research, I use the geographic expansion and the changing nature of the Indonesian family planning program as sources of exogenous variation to identify the parameters of the structural model. I estimate the model using maximum likelihood techniques with data from IFLS 1 for the periods 1979-1993. Structural model estimates indicate that informal sector jobs offer greater compatibility between work and childcare. Parameter estimates indicate that choices of contraception method and employment sector vary by exogenous characteristics.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperComputer Networks and Productivity Revisited: Does Plant Size Matter? Evidence and Implications
September 2010
Working Paper Number:
CES-10-25
Numerous studies have documented a positive association between information technology (IT) investments and business- and establishment-level productivity, but these studies usually pay sole or disporportionate attention to small- or medium-sized entities. In this paper, we revisit the evidence for manufacturing plants presented in Atrostic and Nguyen (2005) and show that the positive relationship between computer networks and labor productivity is only found among small- and medium-sized plants. Indeed, for larger plants the relationship is negative, and employment-weighted estimates indicate computer networks have a negative relationship with the productivity of employees, on average. These findings indicate that computer network investments may have an ambiguous relationship with aggregate labor productivity growth.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperEuler-Equation Estimation for Discrete Choice Models: A Capital Accumulation Application
January 2010
Working Paper Number:
CES-10-02
This paper studies capital adjustment at the establishment level. Our goal is to characterize capital adjustment costs, which are important for understanding both the dynamics of aggregate investment and the impact of various policies on capital accumulation. Our estimation strategy searches for parameters that minimize ex post errors in an Euler equation. This strategy is quite common in models for which adjustment occurs in each period. Here, we extend that logic to the estimation of parameters of dynamic optimization problems in which non-convexities lead to extended periods of investment inactivity. In doing so, we create a method to take into account censored observations stemming from intermittent investment. This methodology allows us to take the structural model directly to the data, avoiding time-consuming simulation based methods. To study the effectiveness of this methodology, we first undertake several Monte Carlo exercises using data generated by the structural model. We then estimate capital adjustment costs for U.S. manufacturing establishments in two sectors.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Impact of Plant-Level Resource Reallocations and Technical Progress on U.S. Macroeconomic Growth
December 2009
Working Paper Number:
CES-09-43
We build up from the plant level an "aggregate(d) Solow residual" by estimating every U.S. manufacturing plant's contribution to the change in aggregate final demand between 1976 and 1996. We decompose these contributions into plant-level resource reallocations and plant-level technical efficiency changes. We allow for 459 different production technologies, one for each 4- digit SIC code. Our framework uses the Petrin and Levinsohn (2008) definition of aggregate productivity growth, which aggregates plant-level changes to changes in aggregate final demand in the presence of imperfect competition and other distortions and frictions. On average, we find that aggregate reallocation made a larger contribution than aggregate technical efficiency growth. Our estimates of the contribution of reallocation range from 1:7% to2:1% per year, while our estimates of the average contribution of aggregate technical efficiency growth range from 0:2% to 0:6% per year. In terms of cyclicality, the aggregate technical efficiency component has a standard deviation that is roughly 50% to 100% larger than that of aggregate total reallocation, pointing to an important role for technical efficiency in macroeconomic fluctuations. Aggregate reallocation is negative in only 3 of the 20 years of our sample, suggesting that the movement of inputs to more highly valued activities on average plays a stabilizing role in manufacturing growth.View Full Paper PDF
