Papers Containing Tag(s): 'National Science Foundation'
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Viewing papers 111 through 120 of 334
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Working PaperOutsourced R&D and GDP Growth
March 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-19
Endogenous growth theory holds that growth should increase with R&D. However coarse comparison between R&D and US GDP growth over the past forty years indicates that inflation scientific labor increased 2.5 times, while GDP growth was at best stagnant. The leading explanation for the disconnect between theory and the empirical record is that R&D has gotten harder. I develop and test an alternative view that firms have become worse at it. I find no evidence R&D has gotten harder. Instead I find firms' R&D productivity declined 65%, and that the main culprit in the decline is outsourced R&D, which is unproductive for the funding firm. This offers hope firms' R&D productivity and economic growth may be fairly easily restored by bringing outsourced R&D back in-house.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Impact of Immigration on the Labor Market Outcomes of Native Workers: Evidence using Longitudinal Data from the LEHD
January 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-56
Empirical estimates of the effect of immigration on native workers that rely on spatial comparisons have generally found small effects, but have been subject to the criticism that out-migration by native workers dampens the observed effect by spreading it over a larger area. In contrast, studies that rely on variation in immigration across industries, occupations, or education-based skill-levels often report large negative effects, but rely primarily on repeated cross-sectional data sets which also cannot account for the adjustment of native workers over time. In this paper, we use a newly available data set, the Longitudinal Employer Household Data (LEHD), which provides quarterly earnings records, geographic location, and firm and industry identifiers for 97% of all privately employed workers in 29 states. We use this data to analyze the impact of immigration on earnings changes and the mobility response of native workers. Overall, we find that although immigration has a negative effect on the earnings and employment of native workers, and positive effects on their firm, industry, and cross-state mobility, the overall size of the effects is small.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperBusiness Dynamics Statistics of High Tech Industries
January 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-55
Modern market economies are characterized by the reallocation of resources from less productive, less valuable activities to more productive, more valuable ones. Businesses in the High Technology sector play a particularly important role in this reallocation by introducing new products and services that impact the entire economy. Tracking the performance of this sector is therefore of primary importance, especially in light of recent evidence that suggests a slowdown in business dynamism in High Tech industries. The Census Bureau produces the Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS), a suite of data products that track job creation, job destruction, startups, and exits by firm and establishment characteristics including sector, firm age, and firm size. In this paper we describe the methodologies used to produce a new extension to the BDS focused on businesses in High Technology industries.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperMaking a Motivated Manager: A Census Data Investigation into Efficiency Differences Between Franchisee and Franchisor-Owned Restaurants
January 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-54
While there has been significant research on the reasons for franchising, little work has examined the effects of franchising on establishment performance. This paper attempts to fill that gap. We use restricted-access US Census Bureau microdata from the 2007 Census of Retail Trade to examine establishment-level productivity of franchisee- and franchisor-owned restaurants. We do this by employing a two-stage data envelopment analysis model where the first stage uses DEA to measure each establishment's efficiency. The DEA efficiency score is then used as the second-stage dependent variable. The results show a strong and robust effect attributed to franchisee ownership for full service restaurants, but a smaller and insignificant difference for limited service restaurants. We believe the differences in task programability between limited and full service restaurants results in a very different role for managers/franchisees and is the driving factor behind the different results.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Management and Organizational Practices Survey (MOPS): Cognitive Testing*
January 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-53
All Census Bureau surveys must meet quality standards before they can be sent to the public for data collection. This paper outlines the pretesting process that was used to ensure that the Management and Organizational Practices Survey (MOPS) met those standards. The MOPS is the first large survey of management practices at U.S. manufacturing establishments. The first wave of the MOPS, issued for reference year 2010, was subject to internal expert review and two rounds of cognitive interviews. The results of this pretesting were used to make significant changes to the MOPS instrument and ensure that quality data was collected. The second wave of the MOPS, featuring new questions on data in decision making (DDD) and uncertainty and issued for reference year 2015, was subject to two rounds of cognitive interviews and a round of usability testing. This paper illustrates the effort undertaken by the Census Bureau to ensure that all surveys released into the field are of high quality and provides insight into how respondents interpret the MOPS questionnaire for those looking to utilize the MOPS data.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperA Portrait of Firms that Invest in R&D
January 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-41
We focus on the evolution and behavior of firms that invest in research and development (R&D). We build upon the cross-sectional analysis in Foster and Grim (2010) that identified the characteristics of top R&D spending firms and follow up by charting the behavior of these firms over time. Our focus is dynamic in nature as we merge micro-level cross-sectional data from the Survey of Industrial Research and Development (SIRD) and the Business Research & Development and Innovation Survey (BRDIS) with the Longitudinal Business Database (LBD). The result is a panel firm-level data set from 1992 to 2011 that tracks firms' performances as they enter and exit the R&D surveys. Using R&D expenditures to proxy R&D performance, we find the top R&D performing firms in the U.S. across all years to be large, old, multinational enterprises. However, we also find that the composition of R&D performing firms is gradually shifting more towards smaller domestic firms with expenditures being less sensitive to scale effects. We find a high degree of persistence for these firms over time. We chart the history of R&D performing firms and compare them to all firms in the economy and find substantial differences in terms of age, size, firm structure and international activity; these differences persist when looking at future firm outcomes.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperTHE IMPACT OF LATINO-OWNED BUSINESS ON LOCAL ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE
January 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-34
This paper takes advantage of the Michigan Census Research Data Center to merge limited-access Census Bureau data with county level information to investigate the impact of Latino-owned business (LOB) employment share on local economic performance measures, namely per capita income, employment, poverty, and population growth. Beginning with OLS and then moving to the Spatial Durbin Model, this paper shows the impact of LOB overall employment share is insignificant. When decomposed into various industries, however, LOB employment share does have a significant impact on economic performance measures. Significance varies by industry, but the results support a divide in the impact of LOB employment share in low and high-barrier industries.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperTHE DYNAMICS OF LATINO-OWNED BUSINESS WITH COMPARISIONS TO OTHER ETHNICITIES
January 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-33
This paper employs the Michigan Census Research Data Center to merge three limited-access Census Bureau data sets by individual firm and establishment level to investigate the factors associated with the Latino-owned Business (LOB) location and dynamics over time. The three main LOB outcomes under analysis are as follows: (1) the probability of a business being Latino-owned as opposed to a business being Asian-owned, Black-owned, or White-owned; (2) the probability of new business entry and exit; and (3) LOB employment growth. This paper then compares these factors associated with LOB with past findings on businesses that are Asian-owned, Black-owned, and White-owned. Some notable findings include: (1) only Black business owners are less associated with using personal savings as start-up capital than Latinos; (2) the only significant coefficient on start-up capital source is personal savings and it increases the odds of survival of a Latino business by 4%; (3) on average, having Puerto Rican ancestry decreases the odds of business survival; and (4) LOB are relatively likely to start a business with a small amount of capital, which, in turn, limits their future growth.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperResearch Funding and Regional Economies
January 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-32
Public support of research typically relies on the notion that universities are engines of economic development, and that university research is a primary driver of high wage localized economic activity. Yet the evidence supporting that notion is based on aggregate descriptive data, rather than detailed links at the level of individual transactions. Here we use new micro-data from three countries - France, Spain and the United States - to examine one mechanism whereby such economic activity is generated, namely purchases from regional businesses. We show that grant funds are more likely to be expended at businesses physically closer to universities than at those farther away. In addition, if a vendor has been a supplier to a grant once, that vendor is subsequently more likely to be a vendor on the same or related grants. Firms behave in a way that is consistent with the notion that propinquity is good for business; if a firm supplies a research grant at a university in a given year it is more likely to open an establishment near that university in subsequent years than other firms.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Management and Organizational Practices Survey (MOPS): An Overview*
January 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-28
Understanding productivity and business dynamics requires measuring production outputs and inputs. Through its surveys and use of administrative data, the Census Bureau collects information on production outputs and inputs including labor, capital, energy, and materials. With the introduction of the Management and Organizational Practices Survey (MOPS), the Census Bureau added information on another component of production: management. It has long been hypothesized that management is an important component of firm success, but until recently the study of management was confined to hypotheses, anecdotes, and case studies. Building upon the work of Bloom and Van Reenen (2007), the first-ever large scale survey of management practices in the United States, the MOPS, was conducted by the Census Bureau for 2010. A second, enhanced version of the MOPS is being conducted for 2015. The enhancement includes two new topics related to management: data and decision making (DDD) and uncertainty. As information technology has expanded plants are increasingly able to utilize data in their decision making. Structured management practices have been found to be complementary to DDD in earlier studies. Uncertainty has policy implications because uncertainty is found to be associated with reduced investment and employment. Uncertainty also plays a role in the targeting component of management.View Full Paper PDF
