Papers Containing Tag(s): 'Bureau of Labor Statistics'
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Viewing papers 291 through 300 of 340
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Working PaperEarnings Mobility in the US: A New Look at Intergenerational Inequality
May 2002
Working Paper Number:
CES-02-11
This study uses a new data set that contains the Social Security earnings histories of parents and children in the 1984 Survey of Income and Program Participation, to measure the intergenerational elasticity in earnings in the United States. Earlier studies that found an intergenerational elasticity of 0.4 have typically used only up to five-year averages of fathers' earnings to measure fathers' permanent earnings. However, dynamic earnings models that allow for serial correlation in transitory shocks to earnings imply that using such a short time span may lead to estimates that are biased down by nearly 30 percent. Indeed, by using many more years of fathers' earnings than earlier studies, the intergenerational elasticity between fathers and sons is estimated to be around 0.6 implying significantly less mobility in the U.S. than previous research indicated. The elasticity in earnings between fathers and daughters is of a similar magnitude. The evidence also suggests that family income has an even larger effect than fathers' earnings on children's future labor market success. The elasticity of earnings is higher for families with low net worth, offering some empirical support for theoretical models that predict differences due to borrowing constraints. Some evidence of a higher elasticity among blacks is found but the results are not conclusive.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperUnlocking the Information in Integrated Social Data
May 2002
Working Paper Number:
tp-2002-21
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Working PaperThe Measurement of Human Capital in the U.S. Economy
April 2002
Working Paper Number:
tp-2002-09
We develop a new approach to measuring human capital that permits the distinction of both observable and unobservable dimensions of skill by associating human capital with the portable part of an individual's wage rate. Using new large-scale, integrated employer-employee data containing information on 68 million individuals and 3.6 million firms, we explain a very large proportion (84%) of the total variation in wages rates and attribute substantial variation to both individual and employer heterogeneity. While the wage distribution remained largely unchanged between 1992-1997, we document a pronounced right shift in the overall distribution of human capital. Most workers entering our sample, while less experienced, were otherwise more highly skilled, a difference which can be attributed almost exclusively to unobservables. Nevertheless, compared to exiters and continuers, entrants exhibited a greater tendency to match to firms paying below average internal wages. Firms reduced employment shares of low skilled workers and increased employment shares of high skilled workers in virtually every industry. Our results strongly suggest that the distribution of human capital will continue to shift to the right, implying a continuing up-skilling of the employed labor force.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperEmployment that is not covered by state unemployment
January 2002
Working Paper Number:
tp-2002-16
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Working PaperNew Uses of Health and Pension Information
January 2002
Working Paper Number:
tp-2002-03
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Working PaperChanging the Boundaries of the Firm: Changes in the Clustering of Human Capital
January 2002
Working Paper Number:
tp-2002-02
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Working PaperWhen Do Firms Shift Production Across States to Avoid Environmental Regulation?
December 2001
Working Paper Number:
CES-01-18
This paper examines whether a firm's allocation of production across its plants responds to the environmental regulation faced by those plants, as measured by differences in stringency across states. We also test whether sensitivity to regulation differs based on differences across firms in compliance behavior and/or differences across states in industry importance and concentration. We use Census data for the paper and oil industries to measure the share of each state in each firm's production during the 1967-1992 period. We use several measures of state environmental stringency and test for interactions between regulatory stringency and three factors: the firm's overall compliance rate, a Herfindahl index of industry concentration in the state, and the industry's share in the state economy. We find significant results for the paper industry: firms allocate smaller production shares to states with stricter regulations. This impact is concentrated among firms with low compliance rates, suggesting that low compliance rates are due to high compliance costs, not low compliance benefits. The interactions between stringency and industry characteristics are less often significant, but suggest that the paper industry is more affected by regulation where it is larger or more concentrated. Our results are weaker for the oil industry, reflecting either less opportunity to shift production across states or a greater impact of environmental regulation on paper mills.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperWithin and Between Firm Changes in Human Capital, Technology, and Productivity Preliminary and incomplete
December 2001
Working Paper Number:
tp-2001-03
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Working PaperOutput Market Segmentation and Productivity
June 2001
Working Paper Number:
CES-01-07
Recent empirical investigations have shown enormous plant-level productivity heterogeneity, even within narrowly defined industries. Most of the theoretical explanations for this have focused on factors that influence the production process, such as idiosyncratic technology shocks or input price differences. I claim that characteristics of the output demand markets can also have predictable influences on the plant-level productivity distribution within an industry. Specifically, an industry's degree of output market segmentation (i.e., the substitutability of one plant's output for another's in that industry) should impact the dispersion and central tendency of the industry's plant-level productivity distribution. I test this notion empirically by seeing if measurable cross-sectional variation in market segmentation affects moments of industry's plant-level productivity distribution moments. I find significant and robust evidence consistent with this notion.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperMarket Structure and Productivity: A Concrete Example
June 2001
Working Paper Number:
CES-01-06
This paper shows that imperfect output substitutability explains part of the observed persistent plant-level productivity dispersion. Specifically, as substitutability in a market increases, the market's productivity distribution exhibits falling dispersion and higher central tendency. The proposed mechanism behind this result is truncation of the distribution from below as increased substitutability shifts demand to lower-cost plants and drives inefficient plants out of business. In a case study of the ready-mixed concrete industry, I examine the impact of one manifestation of this effect, driven by geographic market segmentation resulting from transport costs. A theoretical foundation is presented characterizing how differences in the density of local demand impact the number of producers and the ability of customers to choose between suppliers, and through this, the equilibrium productivity and output levels across regions. I also introduce a new method of obtaining plant-level productivity estimates that is well suited to this application and avoids potential shortfalls of commonly used procedures. I use these estimates to empirically test the presented theory, and the results support the predictions of the model. Local demand density has a significant influence on the shape of plant-level productivity distributions, and accounts for part of the observed intra-industry variation in productivity, both between and within given market areas.View Full Paper PDF
