Papers Containing Tag(s): 'North American Industry Classification System'
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Viewing papers 1 through 10 of 370
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Working PaperSpecialization in a Knowledge Economy
December 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-77
Using firm-level data from the US Census Longitudinal Business Database (LBD), this paper exhibits novel evidence about a wave of specialization experienced by US firms in the 1980s and 1990s. Specifically: (i) Firms, especially innovating ones, decreased production scope, i.e., the number of industries in which they produce. (ii) Innovation and production separated, with small firms specializing in innovation and large firms in production. Higher patent trading efficiency and stronger patent protection are proposed to explain these phenomena. An endogenous growth model is developed with potential mismatches between innovation and production. Calibrating the model suggests that increased trading efficiency and better patent protection can explain 20% of the observed production scope decrease and 108% of the innovation and production separation. They result in a 0.64 percent point increase in the annual economic growth rate. Empirical analyses provide evidence of causality from pro-patent reforms in the 1980s to the two specialization patterns.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperTrapped or Transferred: Worker Mobility and Labor Market Power in the Energy Transition
December 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-76
Using matched employer-employee data covering 1.35 million US workers separated from the fossil fuel extraction industry between 1999 and 2019, I estimate how local fossil fuel labor demand shocks affect employment and earnings. Employment probabilities fall markedly after exposure, and earnings decline gradually over the first seven years with only partial recovery by ten years since exposure to the shocks. Workers who remain in the fossil fuel sector, disproportionately men in sector-specific roles, experience nearly twice the earnings losses of those who switch sectors, possibly due to limited occupational mobility. Among non-switchers, losses are larger in labor markets with high employer concentration, indicating that scarce outside options translate into lower reemployment wages and weaker bargaining positions. Geographic movers fare worse than stayers, reflecting negative selection (younger, lower-earning) and relocation to metropolitan areas where fossil fuel or low-skilled service sectors remain highly concentrated, leaving monopsony power intact.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperMeasurement Matters: Financial Reporting and Productivity
December 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-72
We examine how differences in financial reporting practices shape firm productivity. Leveraging new audit questions in the U.S. Census Bureau's 2021 Management and Organizational Practices Survey (MOPS), and complementary tax return data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and detailed financial records from Sageworks, we find that (i) variation in reporting quality explains 10-20 percent of intra-industry total factor productivity dispersion, and (ii) evidence of complementarity between the effects of financial audits and management practices driving firm productivity. We then examine the underlying mechanisms. First, audits function as a managerial technology, improving the precision of internal information and raising efficiency, with stronger effects in competitive, low-margin industries and among younger firms. Second, exploiting cross-state variation in tax incentives, we show that audits constrain underreporting and mitigate the downward bias in measured productivity. Together, these results highlight the underrated importance of financial reporting quality driving firm productivity.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperDouble-Pane Glass Ceiling: Commercial Engagement and the Female-Male Earnings Gap for Faculty
September 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-68
I use administrative data from universities (UMETRICS) linked to the universe of confidential W-2 and 1040-C tax records to measure faculty commercial engagement and its role in female-male earnings gaps. Female faculty are 20 percentage points less likely to engage commercially, with the entire gap driven by self-employment. The raw earnings gap is $63,000 on a base of $162,000 and non-university earnings account for $18,000 (29 percent) of this total. Thus, while university pay explains most of the gap, commercial engagement substantially amplifies it. Earnings gaps appear in all components of non-university pay ' self-employment, and work for incumbent, young/startup, high-tech, and non-high-tech firms ' and remain large, though attenuated, after controlling publications, patents, field, university, scientific resources, age, marital status, childbearing, and demographics. Gaps widen as faculty move up the earnings distribution, and commercial engagement becomes a larger contributor. Men and women engage with similar industries, but men earn more in all shared industries.View Full Paper PDF
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Working Paper'Class of Customer' Question from the US Economic Census
September 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-66
The Economic Census (EC) collects detailed information on the class of customers served by establishments'for example, the share of an establishment's sales to other businesses or to government entities'for a subset of sectors in the economy. In this paper, we evaluate the data from the 'Class of Customer' question from the EC, with a particular focus on sales to the government. These data have seldom been used in empirical research and are unique in that they enable researchers to link establishment-level Census data with information on government procurement. We compile and analyze large volumes of publicly available tabulated data about the class of customer question over time. Using these data, we document three main findings. First, total sales to government from establishments covered by the class of customer question account for approximately 4 percent of GDP'just under half of total government procurement as measured in the national accounts. Second, the sectoral distribution of government expenditure is significantly different from that of private sector spending. Certain industries, such as Construction and Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services, account for a much larger share of government expenditure relative to private sector expenditure. Third, sales to the government make up a substantial portion of total sales in several sectors'for instance, 70 percent in Facilities Support Services, 30 percent in Waste Treatment and Disposal, and 17 percent in Construction. Finally, we use the microdata to examine nonresponse rates to the class of customer question across establishments based on the number of employees.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperMatching Compustat Data to the Longitudinal Business Database, 1976-2020
September 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-65
This paper details the methodology for creating an updated Compustat-Longitudinal Business Database (LBD) bridge, facilitating linkage between company identifiers in Compustat and firm identifiers in the LBD. In addition to data from Compustat, we incorporate historical data on public companies from various public and private sources, including information on executive names. Our methodology involves a series of stages using fuzzy name and address matching, including EIN, telephone number, and industry code matching. Qualified researchers with approved proposals can access this bridge though the Federal Statistical Research Data Centers. The Compustat-SSL bridge serves as a crucial resource for longitudinal studies on U.S. businesses, corporate governance, and executive compensation.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperNational Chains and Trends in Retail Productivity Dispersion
September 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-64
Productivity dispersion within an industry is an important characteristic of the business environment, potentially reflecting factors such as market structure, production technologies, and reallocation frictions. The retail trade sector saw significant changes between 1987 and 2017, and dispersion statistics can help characterize how it evolved over this period. In this paper, we shed light on this transformation by developing public-use Dispersion Statistics on Productivity (DiSP) data for the retail sector for 1987 through 2017. We find that from 1987 through 2017, dispersion increased between retail stores at the bottom and middle of the productivity distribution. However, when we weight stores by employment dispersion, the middle of the distribution is lower initially and decreases over time. These patterns are consistent with a retail landscape featuring more and more activity taking place in chain stores with similar productivity. Firm-based dispersion measures exhibit a similar pattern. Further investigation reveals that there is substantial heterogeneity in dispersion levels across industries.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperJob Tasks, Worker Skills, and Productivity
September 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-63
We present new empirical evidence suggesting that we can better understand productivity dispersion across businesses by accounting for differences in how tasks, skills, and occupations are organized. This aligns with growing attention to the task content of production. We link establishment-level data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey with productivity data from the Census Bureau's manufacturing surveys. Our analysis reveals strong relationships between establishment productivity and task, skill, and occupation inputs. These relationships are highly nonlinear and vary by industry. When we account for these patterns, we can explain a substantial share of productivity dispersion across establishments.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperBusiness Owners and the Self-Employed: 33 Million (and Counting!)
September 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-60
Entrepreneurs are known to be key drivers of economic growth, and the rise of online platforms and the broader 'gig economy' has led self-employment to surge in recent decades. Yet the young and small businesses associated with this activity are often absent from economic data. In this paper, we explore a novel longitudinal dataset that covers the owners of tens of millions of the smallest businesses: those without employees. We produce three new sets of statistics on the rapidly growing set of nonemployer businesses. First, we measure transitions between self-employment and wage and salary jobs. Second, we describe nonemployer business entry and exit, as well as transitions between legal form (e.g., sole proprietorship to S corporation). Finally, we link owners to their nonemployer businesses and examine the dynamics of business ownership.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperUnemployment Insurance, Wage Pass-Through, and Endogenous Take-Up
September 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-59
This paper studies how unemployment insurance (UI) generosity affects reservation wages, re-employment wages, and benefit take-up. Using Benefit Accuracy Measurement (BAM) data, we estimate a cross-sectional elasticity of reservation wages with respect to weekly UI benefits of 0.014. Exploiting state variation in Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) intensity and the timing of federal supplements, we find that expanded benefits during COVID-19 increased reservation wages by 8'12 percent. Using CPS rotation data, we also document a 9 percent rise in re-employment wages for UI-eligible workers relative to ineligible workers. Over the same period, the UI take-up rate rose from roughly 30 to 40 percent; Probit estimates indicate that higher benefit levels, rather than changes in observables, account for this increase. A directed search model with an endogenous filing decision replicates these facts: generosity primarily operates through the extensive margin of take-up, which mutes the pass-through from benefits to wages.View Full Paper PDF
