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Producing U.S. Population Statistics Using Multiple Administrative Sources
November 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-58
We identify several challenges encountered when constructing U.S. administrative record-based (AR-based) population estimates for 2020. Though the AR estimates are higher than the 2020 Census at the national level, they are over 15 percent lower in 5 percent of counties, suggesting that locational accuracy can be improved. Other challenges include how to achieve comprehensive coverage, maintain consistent coverage across time, filter out nonresidents and people not alive on the reference date, uncover missing links across person and address records, and predict demographic characteristics when multiple ones are reported or when they are missing. We discuss several ways of addressing these issues, e.g., building in redundancy with more sources, linking children to their parents' addresses, and conducting additional record linkage for people without Social Security Numbers and for addresses not initially linked to the Census Bureau's Master Address File. We discuss modeling to predict lower levels of geography for people lacking those geocodes, the probability that a person is a U.S. resident on the reference date, the probability that an address is the person's residence on the reference date, and the probability a person is in each demographic characteristic category. Regression results illustrate how many of these challenges and solutions affect the AR county population estimates.
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On The Role of Trademarks: From Micro Evidence to Macro Outcomes
March 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-16
What are the effects of trademarks on the U.S. economy? Evidence from comprehensive firm-level data on trademark registrations and outcomes suggests that trademarks protect firm value and are associated with higher firm growth and marketing activity. Motivated by this evidence, trademarks are introduced in a general equilibrium framework to quantify their aggregate effects. In the model, firms invest in product quality and marketing to build a cus tomer base subject to depreciation. Firms can register trademarks to protect their customer base and reduce the cost of informing consumers. The model's predictions on the incidence and timing of trademark registrations, as well as firm growth and advertising expenditures, are consistent with the empirical evidence. Analysis of the calibrated model indicates that the U.S. economy with trademarks generates higher product variety, quality, and welfare, along with higher concentration, compared to the counterfactual economy with no trademarks.
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Who's Most Exposed to International Shocks? Estimating Differences in Import Price Sensitivity across U.S. Demographic Groups
March 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-13R
Differences in consumption patterns across demographic groups mean that international price shocks differentially affect such groups. We construct import price indexes for U.S. households that vary by age, race, marital status, education, and urban status. Black households and urban households experienced significantly higher import price inflation from 1996-2018 compared to other groups, such as white households and rural households. Sensitivity to international price shocks varies widely, implying movements in exchange rates and foreign prices, both during our sample and during the Covid-19 pandemic, drove sizable differences in import price inflation ' and total inflation ' across households.
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Determination of the 2020 U.S. Citizen Voting Age Population (CVAP) Using Administrative Records and Statistical Methodology Technical Report
October 2020
Authors:
John M. Abowd,
J. David Brown,
Lawrence Warren,
Moises Yi,
Misty L. Heggeness,
William R. Bell,
Michael B. Hawes,
Andrew Keller,
Vincent T. Mule Jr.,
Joseph L. Schafer,
Matthew Spence
Working Paper Number:
CES-20-33
This report documents the efforts of the Census Bureau's Citizen Voting-Age Population (CVAP) Internal Expert Panel (IEP) and Technical Working Group (TWG) toward the use of multiple data sources to produce block-level statistics on the citizen voting-age population for use in enforcing the Voting Rights Act. It describes the administrative, survey, and census data sources used, and the four approaches developed for combining these data to produce CVAP estimates. It also discusses other aspects of the estimation process, including how records were linked across the multiple data sources, and the measures taken to protect the confidentiality of the data.
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Identifying U.S. Merchandise Traders: Integrating Customs Transactions with Business Administrative Data
September 2020
Working Paper Number:
CES-20-28
This paper describes the construction of the Longitudinal Firm Trade Transactions Database (LFTTD) enabling the identification of merchandise traders - exporters and importers - in the U.S. Census Bureau's Business Register (BR). The LFTTD links merchandise export and import transactions from customs declaration forms to the BR beginning in 1992 through the present. We employ a combination of deterministic and probabilistic matching algorithms to assign a unique firm identifier in the BR to a merchandise export or import transaction record. On average, we match 89 percent of export and import values to a firm identifier. In 1992, we match 79 (88) percent of export (import) value; in 2017, we match 92 (96) percent of export (import) value. Trade transactions in year t are matched to years between 1976 and t+1 of the BR. On average, 94 percent of the trade value matches to a firm in year t of the BR. The LFTTD provides the most comprehensive identification of and the foundation for the analysis of goods trading firms in the U.S. economy.
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Recall and Response: Relationship Adjustments to Adverse Information Shocks
March 2020
Working Paper Number:
CES-20-13R
How resilient are U.S. buyer-foreign supplier relationships to new information about product defects? We construct a novel dataset of U.S. consumer-product recalls sourced from foreign suppliers between 1995 and 2013. Using an event-study approach, we find that compared to control relationships, buyers that experience recalls temporarily reduce their probability of trading with the suppliers of the recalled products by 17%. The reduction is much larger for new than established buyer'supplier relationships. Buyers that experience a recall are more likely to add other suppliers to their portfolios, diversifying supplier-specific risk in the aftermath of a recall; this effect, too, is larger for buyers impacted by recalls in new relationships. There is a long lag ' up to two years ' before diversification, consistent with a high cost of establishing new relationships.
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Are Customs Records Consistent Across Countries? Evidence from the U.S. and Colombia
March 2020
Working Paper Number:
CES-20-11
In many countries, official customs records include identifying information on the exporting and importing firms involved in each shipment. This information allows researchers to study international business networks, offshoring patterns, and the micro-foundations of aggregate trade flows. It also provides the government with a basis for tariff assessments at the border. However, there are no mechanisms in place to ensure that the shipment-level information recorded by the exporting country is consistent with the shipment-level information recorded by the importing country. And to the extent that there are discrepancies, it is not clear how prevalent they are or what form they take. In this paper we explore these issues, both to enhance our understanding of the limitations of customs records, and to inform future discussions of possible revisions in the way they are collected.
Specifically, we match U.S.-bound export shipments that appear in Colombian Customs records (DIAN) with their counterparts in the US Customs records (LFTTD): U.S. import shipments from Colombia. Several patterns emerge. First, differences in the coverage of the two countries customs records lead to significant discrepancies in the official bilateral trade flow statistics of these two countries: the DIAN database records 8 percent fewer transactions than the LFTTD database over the sample period, and the average export shipment size in the DIAN is roughly 4 percent smaller than the corresponding import shipment size in the LFTTD. These discrepancies are not due to difference in minimum shipment sizes and they are not particular to a few sectors, though they are more common among small shipments and they evolve over time.
Second, if we rely exclusively on firms' names and addresses, ignoring other shipment characteristics (value, product code, etc.), we are able to match 85 percent of the value of U.S. imports from Colombia in our LFTTD sample with particular Colombian suppliers in the DIAN. Further, fully 97 percent of the value of Colombian exports to the U.S. can be mapped onto particular importers in the U.S. LFTTD.
Third, however, match rates at the shipment level within buyer-seller pairs are low. That is, while buyers and sellers can be paired up fairly accurately, only 25-30 percent of the individual transactions in the customs records of the two countries can be matched using fuzzy algorithms at reasonable tolerance levels.
Fourth, the manufacturer ID (MANUF_ID) that appears in the LFTTD implies there are roughly twice as many Colombian exporters as actually appear in the DIAN. And similar comments apply to an analogous MANUF_ID variable constructed from importer name and address information in the DIAN. Hence studies that treat each MANUF_ID value as a distinct firm are almost surely overstating the number of foreign firms that engage in trade with the U.S. by a substantial amount.
Finally, we conclude that if countries were to require that exporters report standardized shipment identifiers'either invoice numbers or bill of lading/air waybill numbers'it would be far easier to track individual transactions and to identify international discrepancies in reporting.
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Understanding the Quality of Alternative Citizenship Data Sources for the 2020 Census
August 2018
Working Paper Number:
CES-18-38R
This paper examines the quality of citizenship data in self-reported survey responses compared to administrative records and evaluates options for constructing an accurate count of resident U.S. citizens. Person-level discrepancies between survey-collected citizenship data and administrative records are more pervasive than previously reported in studies comparing survey and administrative data aggregates. Our results imply that survey-sourced citizenship data produce significantly lower estimates of the noncitizen share of the population than would be produced from currently available administrative records; both the survey-sourced and administrative data have shortcomings that could contribute to this difference. Our evidence is consistent with noncitizen respondents misreporting their own citizenship status and failing to report that of other household members. At the same time, currently available administrative records may miss some naturalizations and capture others with a delay. The evidence in this paper also suggests that adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census would lead to lower self-response rates in households potentially containing noncitizens, resulting in higher fieldwork costs and a lower-quality population count.
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The Great Recession and a Missing Generation of Exporters
August 2018
Working Paper Number:
CES-18-33
The collapse of international trade surrounding the Great Recession has garnered significant attention. This paper studies firm entry and exit in foreign markets and their role in the post-recession recovery of U.S. exports using confidential microdata from the U.S. Census Bureau. We find that incumbent exporters account for the vast majority of the decline in export volumes during the crisis. The recession also induced a missing generation of exporters, with large increases in exits and a substantial decline in entries into foreign markets. New exporters during these years tended to have larger export volumes, however, compensating for the decline in the number of exporting firms. Thus, while entry and exit were important for determining the variety of U.S. goods that were exported, they were less important for the trajectory of aggregate foreign sales.
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An Anatomy of U.S. Firms Seeking Trademark Registration
April 2018
Working Paper Number:
CES-18-22
This paper reports on the construction of a new dataset that combines data on trademark applications and registrations from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office with data on firms from the U.S. Census Bureau. The resulting dataset allows tracking of various activity related to trademark use and protection over the life-cycle of firms, such as the first application for a trademark registration, the first use of a trademark, and the renewal, assignment, and cancellation of trademark registrations. Facts about firm-level trademark activity are documented, including the incidence and timing of trademark registration filings over the firm life-cycle and the connection between firm characteristics and trademark applications. We also explore the relation of trademark application filing to firm employment and revenue growth, and to firm innovative activity as measured by R&D and patents.
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