Papers Containing Tag(s): 'Ordinary Least Squares'
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Viewing papers 281 through 290 of 301
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Working PaperThe Diffusion of Modern Manufacturing Practices: Evidence from Retail-Apparel Sectors
February 1997
Working Paper Number:
CES-97-11
As in many industries, firms in the apparel industry exhibit substantial heterogeneity in the adoption of "modern manufacturing" practices. Based on detailed business-unit level data, we show that this heterogeneity can be explained firm inputs. We show that the interaction between these explanatory factors means that complementarities between inputs may emerge over time rather than all at once as is often assumed in other studies of complementarities.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperFinancing Small Business Creation: The Case of Chinese and Korean Immigrant Entrepreneurs
September 1996
Working Paper Number:
CES-96-09
Prevailing scholarly literature misrepresents the realities of how immigrant Korean and Chinese entrepreneurs finance entry into small business. Supportive peer and community subgroups are not major sources of startup capital; the majority of all loan funds are raised by borrowing from financial institutions. The major single funding source is equity capital, which derives almost entirely from family household wealth holdings. Controlling for firm and owner traits, comparison groups of nonminority and Asian American nonimmigrant self-employed borrowers are shown to have greater access to loan sources than Korean and Chinese immigrants. High equity capital investment offsets this disadvantage. Absent rotating credit associations, and other minor debt sources, the average Korean/Chinese startup possesses substantially more financial capital than its nonminority counterparts.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperMeasuring the Impact of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership
September 1996
Working Paper Number:
CES-96-08
In this paper, I measure the impact of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) on productivity and sales growth at manufacturing plants. To do this, I match MEP client data to the Census Bureau's Longitudinal Research Database (LRD). The LRD contains data for all manufacturing establishments in the U.S. and provides a number of measures of plant performance and characteristics that are measured consistently across plants and time. This facilitates valid comparisons between both client and non-client plants and among clients served by different MEP centers. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) administers the MEP as part of their effort to improve the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing. The program provides business and technical assistance to small and medium sized manufacturers much as agricultural extension does for farmers. The goal of the paper is to see if measures of plant performance (e.g., productivity and sales growth) are systematically related to participation in the MEP, while controlling for other factors that are known or thought to influence performance. Selection bias is often a problem in evaluation studies so I specify an econometric model that controls for selection. I estimate the model with data from 8 manufacturing extension centers in 2 states. The control group includes all plants from each state in the LRD. Preliminary results indicate that MEP participation is systematically related to productivity growth but not to sales growth.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperTechnology and Jobs: Secular Changes and Cyclical Dynamics
September 1996
Working Paper Number:
CES-96-07
In this paper, we exploit plant-level data for U.S. manufacturing for the 1970s and 1980s to explore the connections between changes in technology and the structure of employment and wages. We focus on the nonproduction labor share (measured alternatively by employment and wages) as the variable of interest. Our main findings are summarized as follows: (i) aggregate changes in the nonproduction labor share at annual and longer frequencies are dominated by within plant changes; (ii) the distribution of annual within plant changes exhibits a spike at zero, tremendous heterogeneity and fat left and right tails; (iii) within plant secular changes are concentrated in recessions; and (iv) while observable indicators of changes in technology account for a significant fraction of the secular increase in the average nonproduction labor share, unobservable factors account for most of the secular increase, most of the cyclical variation and most of the cross sectional heterogeneity.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperLearning by Doing and Plant Characteristics
August 1996
Working Paper Number:
CES-96-05
Learning by doing, especially spillover learning, has received much attention lately in models of industry evolution and economic growth. The predictions of these models depend on the distribution of learning abilities and knowledge flows across firms and countries. However, the empirical literature provides little guidance on these issues. In this paper, I use plant level data on a sample of entrants in SIC 38, Instruments, to examine the characteristics associated with both proprietary and spillover learning by doing. The plant level data permit tests for the relative importance of within and between firm spillovers. I include both formal knowledge, obtained through R&D expenditures, and informal knowledge, obtained through learning by doing, in a production function framework. I allow the speed of learning to vary across plants according to characteristics such as R&D intensity, wages, and the skill mix. The results suggest that (a) Ainformal@ knowledge, accumulated through production experience at the plant, is a much more important source of productivity growth for these plants than is Aformal@ knowledge gained via research and development expenditures, (b) interfirm spillovers are stronger than intrafirm spillovers, (c) the slope of the own learning curve is positively related to worker quality, (d) the slope of the spillover learning curve is positively related to the skill mix at plants, (e) neither own nor spillover learning curve slopes are related to R&D intensities. These results imply that learning by doing may be, to some extent, an endogenous phenomenon at these plants. Thus, models of industry evolution that incorporate learning by doing may need to be revised. The results are also broadly consistent with the recent growth models.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperSex Segregation in U.S. Manufacturing
June 1996
Working Paper Number:
CES-96-04
This paper studies interplant sex segregation in the U.S. manufacturing industry. The study differs from previous work in that we have detailed information on the characteristics of both workers and firms, and because we measure segregation in a new and better way. We report three main findings. First, there is a substantial amount of interplant sex segregation in the U.S. manufacturing industry, although segregation is far from complete. Second, we find that female managers tend to work in the same plants as female supervisees, even once we control for other plant characteristics. And finally, we find that interplant segregation can account for a substantial fraction of the male/female wage gap in the manufacturing industry, particularly among blue-collar workers.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperARE FIXED EFFECTS FIXED? Persistence in Plant Level Productivity
May 1996
Working Paper Number:
CES-96-03
Estimates of production functions suffer from an omitted variable problem; plant quality is an omitted variable that is likely to be correlated with variable inputs. One approach is to capture differences in plant qualities through plant specific intercepts, i.e., to estimate a fixed effects model. For this technique to work, it is necessary that differences in plant quality are more or less fixed; if the "fixed effects" erode over time, such a procedure becomes problematic, especially when working with long panels. In this paper, a standard fixed effects model, extended to allow for serial correlation in the error term, is applied to a 16-year panel of textile plants. This parametric approach strongly accepts the hypothesis of fixed effects. They account for about one-third of the variation in productivity. A simple non-parametric approach, however, concludes that differences in plant qualities erode over time, that is plant qualities f-mix. Monte Carlo results demonstrate that this discrepancy comes from the parametric approach imposing an overly restrictive functional form on the data; if there were fixed effects of the magnitude measured, one would reject the hypothesis of f-mixing. For textiles, at least, the functional form of a fixed effects model appears to generate misleading conclusions. A more flexible functional form is estimated. The "fixed" effects actually have a half life of approximately 10 to 20 years, and they account for about one-half the variation in productivity.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperInnovation and Regulation in the Pesticide Industry
December 1995
Working Paper Number:
CES-95-14
This paper examines the hypothesis that regulation negatively affects pesticide innovation, causes pesticide companies to introduce more harmful pesticides, and discourages firms from developing pesticides for minor crop markets. The results confirm that pesticide regulation adversely affects innovation and discourages firms from developing pesticides for minor crop markets. Contrary to the hypothesis, however, regulation encourages firms to develop less toxic pesticides. Estimates suggest that it requires about $29 million in industry expenditures on health and environmental testing to affect the toxicity of one new pesticide.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Missing Link: Technology, Productivity, and Investment
October 1995
Working Paper Number:
CES-95-12
This paper examines the relationship between productivity, investment, and age for over 14,000 plants in the U.S. manufacturing sector in the 1972-1988 period. Productivity patterns vary significantly due to plant heterogeneity. Productivity first increases and then decreases with respect to plant age, and size and industry are systematically correlated with productivity and productivity growth. However, there is virtually no observable relationship between investment and productivity or productivity growth. Overall, the results indicate that plant heterogeneity and fixed effects are more important determinants of observable productivity patterns than sunk costs or capital reallocation. Key Words: productivity, investment, technical changeView Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperUsing 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.View Full Paper PDF
