Papers Containing Tag(s): 'Bureau of Labor Statistics'
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Viewing papers 261 through 270 of 340
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Working PaperEfficiency Implications of Corporate Diversification: Evidence from Micro Data
November 2006
Working Paper Number:
CES-06-26
In this study, we contribute to the ongoing research on the rationales for corporate diversification. Using plant-level data from the U.S. Census Bureau, we examine whether combining several lines of business in one entity leads to increased productive efficiency. Studying the direct effect of diversification on efficiency allows us to discern between two major theories of corporate diversification: the synergy hypothesis and the agency cost hypothesis. To measure productive efficiency, we employ a non-parametric approach'a test based on Varian's Weak Axiom of Profit Maximization (WAPM). This method has several advantages over other conventional measures of productive efficiency. Most importantly, it allows one to perform the efficiency test without relying on assumptions about the functional form of the underlying production function. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first application of the WAPM test to a large sample of non-financial firms. The study provides evidence that business segments of diversified firms are more efficient compared to single-segment firms in the same industry. This finding suggests that the existence of the so-called 'diversification discount' cannot be explained by efficiency differences between multi-segment and focused firms. Furthermore, more efficient segments tend to be vertically integrated with others segments in the same firm and to have been added through acquisitions rather than grown internally. Overall, the results of this study indicate that corporate diversification is value-enhancing, and that it is not necessarily driven by managers' pursuit of their private benefits.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperDo Alternative Opportunities Matter? The Role of Female Labor Markets in the Decline of Teacher Quality
July 2006
Working Paper Number:
CES-06-22
This paper documents the widely perceived but little investigated notion that teachers today are less qualified than they once were. Using standardized test scores, undergraduate institution selectivity, and positive assortative mating characteristics as measures of quality, evidence of a marked decline in the quality of young women going into teaching between 1960 and 1990 is presented. In contrast, the quality of young women becoming professionals increased. The Roy model of selfselection is used to highlight how occupation differences in the returns to skill determine average teacher quality. Estimates suggest the significance of increasing professional opportunities for women in affecting the decline in teacher quality.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperCementing Relationships: Vertical Integration, Foreclosure, Productivity, and Prices
July 2006
Working Paper Number:
CES-06-21
This paper looks at the reasons for and results of vertical integration, with specific regard to its possible effects on market power as proposed in the theoretical literature on foreclosure. It uses a rich data set on producers in the cement and ready-mixed concrete industries over a 34- year period to perform a detailed case study. There is little evidence that foreclosure effects are quantitatively important in these industries. Instead, prices fall, quantities rise, and entry rates remain unchanged when markets become more integrated. We suggest an alternative mechanism that is consistent with these patterns and provide additional evidence in support of it: namely, that higher productivity producers are more likely to vertically integrate, and as has been documented elsewhere, are also larger, more likely to grow and survive, and charge lower prices. We explore possible sources of vertically integrated producers' productivity advantage and find that the advantage is tied to firm size, possibly in part through improved logistics coordination, but not to several other possible explanations.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperMeasuring Poverty in the United States: History and Current Issues
April 2006
Working Paper Number:
CES-06-11
Formal measurement of poverty in the United States is now about 40 years old. This paper first briefly describes the origins and basis of the official poverty thresholds adopted by the federal government in the late 1960s. Then, it discusses in some detail some of the more current issues that observers suggest must be addressed if changes are to be made. The final sections discuss recent efforts to propose alternates to the current official approach.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperImport Price Pressure on Firm Productivity and Employment: The Case of U.S. Textiles
March 2006
Working Paper Number:
CES-06-09
Theoretical research has predicted three different effects of increased import competition on plant-level behavior: reduced domestic production and sales, improving average efficiency of plants, and increased exit of marginal firms. In empirical work, though, such effects are difficult to separate from the impact of exogenous technological progress (or regress). I use detailed plant-level information available in the US Census of Manufacturers and the Annual Survey of Manufacturers for the period 1983-2000 to decompose these effects. I derive the relative contribution of technology and import competition to the increase in productivity and the decline in employment in textiles production in the US in recent years. I then simulate the impact of removal of quota protection on the scale of operation of the average plant and the incentive to plant closure. The methodology employs a number of important innovations in examining the impact of falling import prices on the domestic production of an import-competing good. First, import competition is modeled directly through its impact on the relative prices of monopolistically competitive goods along the lines suggested by Melitz (2000). Second, the effect of technology is incorporated through structural estimation of plant-level production functions in four factors (capital, labor, energy and materials). Solutions to econometric difficulties related to missing capital data and unobserved productivity are incorporated into the estimation technique. The model is estimated for plants with primary product in SIC 2211 (broadwoven cotton cloth). Results validate modeling demand as for differentiated products. Technological coefficients are sensible, with exogenous technological progress playing a large role. In the simulations run, the effects of foreign price competition are orders of magnitude higher than those of technological progress for the period after quotas on imports are removed. The large-scale reduction in employment and output in the US is shown to be a combination of reduced employment and output at plants in continuous operation and of plant closures that exceed new entries.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Effects of Outsourcing on the Elasticity of Labor Demand
March 2006
Working Paper Number:
CES-06-07
In this paper, I focus on the effects of outsourcing on conditional labor demand elasticities. I begin by developing a model of outsourcing that formalizes this relationship. I show that the increased possibility of outsourcing (modeled as a decline in foreign intermediate input prices and an increase in the elasticity of substitution between foreign and domestic intermediate inputs) should increase labor demand elasticities. I also show that, a decline in the share of unskilled labor, due either to skill biased technological change or to movement of unskilled labor intensive stages abroad, can work in the opposite direction and reverse the increasing trend in elasticities. I then test the predictions of the model using the U.S. Census Bureau's Longitudinal Research Database (LRD). The instrumental variable approach used in the estimation of labor demand equations is the main methodological contribution of this paper. I directly address the endogeneity of wages in the labor demand equation by using average nonmanufacturing wages for each location and year as an instrumental variable for the plant-level wages in the manufacturing sector. The results support the main predictions of my model. U.S. manufacturing plants operating in industries that heavily outsource experienced an increase in their conditional labor demand elasticities during the 1980-1992 period. After 1992 elasticities began to decrease in outsourcing industries. This finding is consistent with the model which suggests that a decline in the share of unskilled labor in total cost could result in such a decrease in labor demand elasticities, precisely when the level of outsourcing is high. Estimates at the two-digit industry level provide further evidence in support of the hypothesis that heavily outsourcing industries experience greater increases in their elasticities.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperConfidentiality Protection in the Census Bureau Quarterly Workforce Indicators
February 2006
Working Paper Number:
tp-2006-02
The QuarterlyWorkforce Indicators are new estimates developed by the Census Bureau's Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Program as a part of its Local Employment Dynamics partnership with 37 state Labor Market Information offices. These data provide detailed quarterly statistics on employment, accessions, layoffs, hires, separations, full-quarter employment (and related flows), job creations, job destructions, and earnings (for flow and stock categories of workers). The data are released for NAICS industries (and 4-digit SICs) at the county, workforce investment board, and metropolitan area levels of geography. The confidential microdata - unemployment insurance wage records, ES-202 establishment employment, and Title 13 demographic and economic information - are protected using a permanent multiplicative noise distortion factor. This factor distorts all input sums, counts, differences and ratios. The released statistics are analytically valid - measures are unbiased and time series properties are preserved. The confidentiality protection is manifested in the release of some statistics that are flagged as "significantly distorted to preserve confidentiality." These statistics differ from the undistorted statistics by a significant proportion. Even for the significantly distorted statistics, the data remain analytically valid for time series properties. The released data can be aggregated; however, published aggregates are less distorted than custom postrelease aggregates. In addition to the multiplicative noise distortion, confidentiality protection is provided by the estimation process for the QWIs, which multiply imputes all missing data (including missing establishment, given UI account, in the UI wage record data) and dynamically re-weights the establishment data to provide state-level comparability with the BLS's Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperReallocation and Productivity Dynamics in the Appalachian Region
January 2006
Working Paper Number:
CES-06-03
The Appalachian Region has long suffered from poor economic performance as measured over a variety of dimensions. Even as the region has improved over the last few decades, Appalachia still lags behind the nation. A growing body of empirical work has found that reallocation is pervasive in the U.S. economy and is an integral component of economic growth. Productivity growth is improved when resources are shifted from less productive establishments towards more productive establishments either through changes in existing establishments or through the births and deaths of establishments. Establishments that use new products, technologies, and production processes replace establishments that do not in a continual process of creative destruction. Using establishment-level data, this paper examines the reallocation and productivity dynamics of the Appalachian Region. The first part of the paper compares the reallocation dynamics of Appalachia to the rest of the U.S. using a newly developed establishment-level database that covers virtually the entire U.S. economy. From this analysis, it is apparent that establishment birth and death rates and job creation and destruction rates for Appalachia are consistently below those for the rest of the U.S.. The second part of the paper uses data from the Economic Censuses to determine whether the establishment and employment dynamics of the Appalachian Region are also qualitatively different (in terms of their productivity rankings) from their U.S. counterparts. It appears that the North subregion of Appalachia has reallocation and productivity dynamics that are consistent with an impeded creative destruction story.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe LEHD Infrastructure Files and the Creation of the Quarterly Workforce Indicators
January 2006
Working Paper Number:
tp-2006-01
The Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) Program at the U.S. Census Bureau, with the support of several national research agencies, has built a set of infrastructure files using administrative data provided by state agencies, enhanced with information from other administrative data sources, demographic and economic (business) surveys and censuses. The LEHD Infrastructure Files provide a detailed and comprehensive picture of workers, employers, and their interaction in the U.S. economy. Beginning in 2003 and building on this infrastructure, the Census Bureau has published the Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI), a new collection of data series that offers unprecedented detail on the local dynamics of labor markets. Despite the fine detail, confidentiality is maintained due to the application of state-of-the-art confidentiality protection methods. This article describes how the input files are compiled and combined to create the infrastructure files. We describe the multiple imputation methods used to impute in missing data and the statistical matching techniques used to combine and edit data when a direct identifier match requires improvement. Both of these innovations are crucial to the success of the final product. Finally, we pay special attention to the details of the confidentiality protection system used to protect the identity and micro data values of the underlying entities used to form the published estimates. We provide a brief description of public-use and restricted-access data files with pointers to further documentation for researchers interested in using these data.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Role of Retail Chains: National, Regional, and Industry Results
December 2005
Working Paper Number:
CES-05-30
We use the establishment level data in the Longitudinal Business Database to measure changes in market structure in the U.S. Retail Trade sector during the period, 1976 to 2000. We use firm ownership information to construct measures of firm entry and exit and also to categorize four types of retail firms: single location, and local, regional, and national chains. We use detailed location data to examine market structure in both national and county markets. We summarize the county level results into three groups: metropolitan, micropolitan, and rural. We find that retail activity is increasingly occurring at establishments owned by chain firms, especially large national chains. On average, we find that all types of retail firms are increasing in size during the period. We also find that larger markets experience more firm turnover. Finally, we see that entry and exit rates vary across two-digit retail industries.View Full Paper PDF
