Papers Containing Tag(s): 'Federal Statistical Research Data Center'
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Viewing papers 1 through 10 of 218
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Working PaperGender Differences in the Returns to Double Majoring: A Case of Signaling?
September 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-60
Over 15 percent of college graduates in the United States graduate with more than one major. While much research exists on the returns to different individual majors, less is known about the causal effects of double majoring. This study provides novel estimates on the returns to those who choose to double major as an undergraduate. We improve on previous studies that rely on controls for observable characteristics by addressing selection concerns in two notable ways. First, we control for institution-specific differences that may influence both the decision to double major and subsequent earnings using proprietary data by including institution fixed effects. Second, we adopt a partial identification approach to address non-random selection into double majoring within institutions. Results broadly align with estimates from prior studies at the aggregate level, but reveal notable gender differences not previously detected. Women experience an earnings return to double majoring of approximately 5 percent, while the return for men is statistically negligible. Our analysis suggests that this discrepancy is consistent with double majors serving as a signaling effect in the labor market, which may help offset the gender pay gap.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperResilience After Climate Shocks: Evidence From SBA Disaster Loans
September 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-58
We show that natural disasters generate persistent declines in U.S. county employment and net job creation. We then examine whether emergency credit can mitigate these effects. Linking the universe of SBA disaster-loan applications to Census Bureau records, we exploit a credit-score screening rule introduced in 2016 and implement a fuzzy regression discontinuity design around the score cutoff. Firms just above the threshold are substantially more likely to receive government-backed loans, and approval increases employment relative to declined applicants, with effects persisting over subsequent years. The adjustment operates primarily through lower job destruction, while reduced firm exit and stronger job creation also contribute. Overall, SBA lending preserved an estimated 9.8% of the jobs that would otherwise have been lost in disaster-affected counties.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperCleansing Floods? Creative Destruction and Government Spending After Disasters
August 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-52
Disasters devastate economies, yet productivity can improve in their wake. Why? Using confidential plant-level microdata from the US Census Bureau and an event study design, I trace the creative destruction process that follows large federally declared floods. Exits are concentrated among the least productive plants, whose used machines are then acquired by high-productivity entrants. Survivors upgrade their machinery as they rebuild and see productivity gains. Federal disaster spending facilitates this process by expanding financing access for nimble young and small firms that disproportionately fuel productive reallocation. Without it, financing constraints stifle creative destruction and productivity declines. Ultimately, the relative income gains from federal disaster assistance generate tax revenues far exceeding the policy's upfront cost, making it both efficiency-enhancing and fiscally sound. My findings reveal a novel allocative efficiency channel through which government spending supports post-disaster recovery, with critical implications for a warming world.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperRegional Trends in Hospitals in the United States
August 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-51
Regional disparities in healthcare access and health outcomes are well-documented in the United States. Rural localities face worse health outcomes and greater challenges to accessing care than urban localities, particularly in the South. This study examines national and regional trends in hospital establishments (openings and closings), employment, size (employees per establishment), and regional concentration over three decades. We document an era of declining hospital counts and increasing employment within the industry, highlighting how the trends have differed across regions and rurality. Finally, we consider how these trends relate to the current policy environment in the United States.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperExtending Place-Based Innovation Policy to Rural Areas: Using Oaxaca-Blinder Decomposition to Identify Endowment Deficiencies
July 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-48
Place-based policy is premised on the idea that productive investments that address endowment deficiencies may release latent comparative advantages, stimulating growth while reducing regional disparities. Extending place-based policy to the domain of innovation is conceptually challenging given conventional wisdom that settlement size is the principal determinant of agglomeration economies that fuels innovation. However, growing concern that more places are being left behind by the innovation economy has prompted greater interest in ways to expand the geography of innovation. Using confidential firm-level data from the 2018 Annual Business Survey, this study examines differences in self-reported innovation activity between firms in rural and urban counties to identify possible endowment deficiencies. We do this by employing the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method to quantify the urban-rural innovation gap to better understand the relative contributions of firm characteristics, owner characteristics, and county-level factors.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperDesperate Capital Breeds Productivity Loss: Evidence From Public Pension Investments in Private Equity
July 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-47
I study investments of U.S. public pensions in private equity (PE), and trace them to ultimate micro assets'target firms which PE funds invest in, using micro-data on private investments combined with confidential U.S. Census data. I show that more severely underfunded public pensions receive lower average PE returns, and match with smaller GPs on average, than less underfunded pensions. Consistent with matching and returns, firms financed by most underfunded public pensions and smallest PE funds face labor productivity decreases. I introduce a novel instrument'public unionization'in support of underfunding positions driving selection into funds. Lastly, I evaluate alternate mechanisms.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperScreening Out the Needy: the Effects of SNAP Work Requirements
July 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-46
We examine the effectiveness of work requirements as a screening device in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Work requirements for 'able-bodied adults without dependents' were suspended after the Great Recession and gradually reinstated across counties and states in the 2010s. Using linked administrative SNAP and employment data from five states and a triple-differences design, we find that work requirements reduce SNAP participation by seven percent without increasing labor supply and disproportionately screen out low-income individuals. We develop a welfare framework to interpret these results and find that the social costs of work requirements exceed budget savings.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperWho Hires Whom? Entrepreneurial Backgrounds and Labor Market Opportunities
July 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-45
What are the implications of unequal access to entrepreneurial careers for labor markets? Using data from the U.S. Census and LinkedIn profiles, we document that entrepreneurs are significantly more likely to hire workers from similar social backgrounds (gender, race, age, education, etc.). These effects are quantitatively large across several demographic dimensions. For example, female employee share at female-founded startups is 36.4pp higher after controlling for industry-by-metro area-by-cohort fixed effects, with corresponding estimates of 51.2pp for Blacks, 37.3pp for Hispanics, and 11.3pp for non-college individuals. Large effects are present in high-growth startups, across industries and occupations, and remain stable across new firm cohorts. In addition, we find that these differences persist out to at least 20 years. We use wage data and an AKM research design to untangle whether the relative differences are driven by labor demand or labor supply effects. We find that demand drives the differences: group-specific wage decompositions show that new firms pay higher relative wages to individuals from similar backgrounds to the entrepreneur. Using these estimates, we calibrate a model of entrepreneurship with heterogeneous ability and production functions, and assess the impacts on relative wage from reducing access barriers to entrepreneurship.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperIntegrating Administrative and Survey Data to Estimate WIC Eligibility and Access
July 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-43
The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides benefits to low-income, nutritionally at-risk women, infants, and children. To administer WIC, officials and program managers at the federal and state level want to understand who is eligible for the program, who among the eligible population chooses to participate, and who is not accessing the program despite their eligibility. Novel individual-level data linkages between restricted-use WIC Administrative Records and the American Community Survey provide WIC access rates estimated at the state and county levels, as well as estimates disaggregated by the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of individuals and their households. These estimates are developed by the Census-FNS-ERS Joint Project, a research partnership among the U.S. Census Bureau, the US Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service and Economic Research Service, and state WIC agencies that provide the requisite WIC administrative data to the Census Bureau. This paper details and evaluates our current data linkage and estimation methods, reports results, and identifies areas for improvement and further research.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperMinimum Wages and the Rise of the Robots
July 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-42
This paper studies how minimum wage policy affects firms' adoption of automation'technologies. Using both state-level measures of robot exposure and novel plant-level'data on industrial robot imports linked to U.S. Census microdata from 1992'2021,'we show that increases in minimum wages raise the likelihood of robot adoption in'manufacturing. Our preferred identification exploits discontinuities at state borders,'comparing otherwise similar firms exposed to different wage floors. Across specifications, a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage increases robot adoption by roughly'8 percent relative to the mean.View Full Paper PDF
