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The Characteristics of Business Owners Database, 1992
May 1999
Working Paper Number:
CES-99-08
This report describes the Characteristics of Business Owners (CBO), 1992 microdata available to researchers at the Center for Economic Studies and the CBO survey. The Bureau of the Census has conducted the 1982, 1987, and 1992 CBOs for the U.S. Small Business Administration, the Minority Business Development Agency, and the general public. For the 1992 CBO, there were three surveys, a sole proprietor survey, an owner survey for each owner in partnerships and S corporations, and a firm survey for each partnership and S corporation. For database purposes, the owner questions on the sole proprietors survey and owner survey were merged, and the firm questions on the sole proprietors survey and firm survey were merged. The owner database has 116,589 records, and the firm survey has 78,147 records. The CBO reports on owners about their background such as owner type (race, and ethnicity), age, education, work experience, veteran status, etc. The CBO reports on firms (with and without employees) about their economic details such as industry, financing, home-based, exporting, franchising, profits, etc. In addition, the CBO was conducted in 1996 on firms in existence in 1992 allowing for some survivability analysis. The CBO over samples women and minority owners to allow researchers to more reliably study these owners. This survey is an extension of the Survey of Minority-Owned Business Enterprises (SMOBE) and Survey of Women-Owned Businesses (WOB) within the economic census. The CBO is available as a report, special tabulations, or microdata for approved researchers.
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THE MANUFACTURING PLANT OWNERSHIP CHANGE DATABASE: ITS CONSTRUCTION AND USEFULNESS
September 1998
Working Paper Number:
CES-98-16
The Center for Economic Studies, U. S. Bureau of the Census, has constructed the "Manufacturing Plant Ownership Change Database" (OCD)using plant-level data taken from the Census Bureau's Longitudinal Research Database (LRD). The OCD contains data on all manufacturing establishments that have experienced ownership change at least once during the period 1963-1992 . This is a unique data set which, together with the LRD, can be used to conduct a variety of economic studies that were not possible before. This paper describes how the OCD was constructed and discusses the usefulness of these data for economic research.
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The Census of Construction Industries Database
August 1998
Working Paper Number:
CES-98-10
The Census of Construction Industries (CCI) is conducted every five years as part of the quinquennial Economic Census. The Census of Construction Industries covers all establishments with payroll that are engaged primarily in contract construction or construction on their own account for sale as defined in the Standard Industrial Classification Manual. As previously administered, the CCI is a partial census including all multi-establishments and all establishments with payroll above $480,000, one out of every five establishments with payroll between $480,000 and $120,000 and one out of eight remaining establishments. The resulting database contains for each year approximately 200,000 establishments in the building construction, heavy construction and special trade construction industrial classifications. This paper compares the content, survey procedures, and sample response of the 1982, 1987 and 1992 Censuses of Construction.
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Business Failure In The 1992 Establishment Universe Sources Of Population Heterogeneity
December 1996
Working Paper Number:
CES-96-13
This study shows that establishment dissolution declines with age and that age at dissolution differs for broad industry and geography groups, establishment affiliation status, and establishment size. The paper uses Bureau of the Census Standard Statistical Establishment List datasets, a census of establishments with employment for the United States for the year 1992. Hence, the findings constitute a comprehensive source of information on the relation between age and dissolution and place in context similar findings of studies restricted to specific industries and/or geographic areas.
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Counting The Self-Employed From Two Perspectives: Household Vs. Business Sample Data
August 1995
Working Paper Number:
CES-95-11
This study compares the number and attributes of self-employed workers using the Characteristics of Business Owners and Current Population Survey data series. Both sources of data have been widely used in empirical studies of entrepreneurship/self-employment. Substantial and inexplicable differences were found in the two data series' estimates of the number of self-employed men and women for both reference years. In terms of individual attributes, the CBO and CPS appear to report reasonably similar profiles of self-employed individuals in terms of marital status and geographic location, and similar systematic gender differences in the industrial distributions of these individuals. However, in terms of other attributes captured by both data series, including age, the two series exhibit notable dissimilarities.
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Using Matched Client And Census Data To Evaluate The Performance Of The Manufacturing Extension Partnership
April 1995
Working Paper Number:
CES-95-07
This paper proposes a framework for evaluating the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP). The MEP is administered by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as part of its effort to improve the global competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing industries. As the name implies, the MEP is modelled after agricultural extension. Rather than farmers the MEP's target population is small and medium sized manufacturers, generally those with less than 500 employees. The MEP currently supports 44 manufacturing extension centers around the country. These centers provide technical and business assistance for manufacturers much as county extension agents do for farmers. The goal of evaluation is to see if MEP engagements lead to positive outcomes from the view of important MEP stakeholders (e.g., MEP clients, MEP centers, NIST, state and local governments and Congress). These outcomes are discussed in McGuckin and Redman (1995) and include: Process Outcomes (e.g., adoption of a new technology by a client); Intermediate Outcomes (e.g., reduction in the clients defect rate); Business Outcomes (e.g., survival and profits) and Policy Outcomes (increases in employment,wages and/or exports). The evaluation framework described in this paper has two components. The first component is an evaluation dataset which contains measures of many of the program outcomes listed above for both MEP clients and a representative control group of non- clients. This dataset will be constructed by linking MEP client records with plant level Census data housed at the Center for Economic Studies of the Census Bureau. The Census data provides measures of several outcome and control variables which are comparable across both plants and time. The Census data include observations for all manufacturing plants in the U.S. from which representative control groups can be constructed. The MEP client records provide data on the type and intensity of extension engagements. Linking these rich sources of information yields a comprehensive and powerful dataset for MEP evaluation. The second component is an evaluation methodology which exploits this rich dataset to make statistical inferences about the impact of MEP services, while carefully controlling for other influences. By using this methodology, we can address many of the shortcomings which plagued previous attempts to evaluate extension services. In addition to evaluation, the dataset described in this paper may be used to profile the characteristics of MEP clients and compare them to non-clients. The Census data contain the complete universe of manufacturing establishments in the U.S.
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CONSTRUCTION OF REGIONAL INPUT-OUTPUT TABLES FROM ESTABLISHMENT-LEVEL MICRODATA: ILLINOIS, 1982
August 1993
Working Paper Number:
CES-93-12
This paper presents a new method for use in the construction of hybrid regional input-output tables, based primarily on individual returns from the Census of Manufactures. Using this method, input- output tables can be completed at a fraction of the cost and time involved in the completion of a full survey table. Special attention is paid to secondary production, a problem often ignored by input-output analysts. A new method to handle secondary production is presented. The method reallocates the amount of secondary production and its associated inputs, on an establishment basis, based on the assumption that the input structure for any given commodity is determined not by the industry in which the commodity was produced, but by the commodity itself -- the commodity-based technology assumption. A biproportional adjustment technique is used to perform the reallocations.
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Published Versus Sample Statistics From The ASM: Implications For The LRD
January 1991
Working Paper Number:
CES-91-01
In principle, the Longitudinal Research Database ( LRD ) which links the establishments in the Annual Survey of Manufactures (ASM) is ideal for examining the dynamics of firm and aggregate behavior. However, the published ASM aggregates are not simply the appropriately weighted sums of establishment data in the LRD . Instead, the published data equal the sum of LRD-based sample estimates and nonsample estimates. The latter reflect adjustments related to sampling error and the imputation of small-establishment data. Differences between the LRD and the ASM raise questions for users of both data sets. For ASM users, time-series variation in the difference indicates potential problems in consistently and reliably estimating the nonsample portion of the ASM. For LRD users, potential sample selection problems arise due to the systematic exclusion of data from small establishments. Microeconomic studies based on the LRD can yield misleading inferences to the extent that small establishments behave differently. Similarly, new economic aggregates constructed from the LRD can yield incorrect estimates of levels and growth rates. This paper documents cross-sectional and time-series differences between ASM and LRD estimates of levels and growth rates of total employment, and compares them with employment estimates provided by Bureau of Labor Statistics and County Business Patterns data. In addition, this paper explores potential adjustments to economic aggregates constructed from the LRD. In particular, the paper reports the results of adjusting LRD-based estimates of gross job creation and destruction to be consistent with net job changes implied by the published ASM figures.
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Gross Job Creation, Gross Job Destruction and Employment Reallocation
June 1990
Working Paper Number:
CES-90-04
This paper measures the heterogeneity of establishment-level employment changes in the U.S. manufacturing sector over the 1972 to 1986 period. Our empirical work exploits a rich data set with approximately 860,000 annual observations on 160,000 manufacturing establishments to calculate rates of gross job creation, gross job destruction, and their sum, gross job reallocation. The central empirical findings are as follows: (1) Based on March-to-March establishment-level employment changes, gross job reallocation averages more than 20% of employment per year. (2) For the manufacturing sector as a whole, March-to-March gross job reallocation varies over time from 17% to 23% of employment per year. (3) Time variation in gross job reallocation is countercyclic-gross job reallocation rates covary negatively with own-sector and manufacturing net employment growth rates. (4) Virtually all of the time variation in gross job reallocation is accounted for by idiosyncratic effects on the establishment growth rate density. Changes in the shape and location of the growth rate density due to aggregate-year effects and sector-year effects cannot explain the observed variation in gross job reallocation. (5) The part of gross job reallocation attributable to idiosyncratic effects fluctuates countercyclically. Combining (3) ' (5), we conclude that the intensity of shifts in the pattern of employment opportunities across establishments exhibits significant countercyclic variation. In preparing the data for this study, we have greatly benefited from the assistance of Robert Bechtold, Timothy Dunne, Cyr Linonis, James Monahan, Al Nucci and other Census Bureau employees at the Center for Economic Studies. We have also benefited from helpful comments by Katherine Abraham, Martin Baily, Fischer Black, Timothy Dunne, David Lilien, Robert McGuckin, Kevin M. Murphy, Larrty Katz, John Wallis, workshop participants at the University of Maryland, the Resource Mobility Session of the Econometric society (Winter 1988 meetings), an NBER conference on Alternative Explanations of Employment Fluctuations, and the NBER's Economic Fluctuations Program Meeting (Summer 1989). Scott Schuh provided excellent research assistance. We gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the National Science Foundation (SES-8721031 and SES-8720931), the Hoover Institution, and the Office of Graduate Studies and Research at the University of Maryland. Davis also thanks the National Science Foundation for it's support through a grant to the National Fellows Program at the Hoover Institution. Most of the research for this paper was conducted while Davis was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
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The 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.
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