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Papers Containing Tag(s): 'Auxiliary Establishment Survey'

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Viewing papers 1 through 10 of 11


  • Working Paper

    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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  • Working Paper

    INTERNAL LABOR MARKETS AND INVESTMENT IN CONGLOMERATES

    May 2013

    Authors: RUI SILVA

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-13-26

    The literature on conglomerates has focused on the misallocation of investments as the cause of the conglomerate discount. I study frictions in the internal labor market as a possible cause of misallocation of investments. Using detailed plant-level data, I document wage convergence in conglomerates: workersin low-wage industries collect higher-than-industry wages when the diversified rm is also present in high-wage industries (by 5.2%). I con rm this effect by exploiting a quasi-experiment involving the implementation of the NAFTA agreement that exogenously increases worker wages of exporting plants. I track the evolution of wages in non-exporting plants in diversi ed rms that also own exporting plants and nd a signi cant increase in wages of these plants relative to una liated non-exporting plants after the event. This pattern of wage convergence affects investments. Plants where workers collect higher-than-industry wages increase the capital-labor ratio in response to their higher labor cost -- and this response to higher wages is associated with higher investment in some divisions.
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  • Working Paper

    CAPITAL AND LABOR REALLOCATION INSIDE FIRMS

    April 2013

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-13-22

    We document how a plant-specific shock to investment opportunities at one plant of a firm ("treated plant") spills over to other plants of the same firm-but only if the firm is financially constrained. While the shock triggers an increase in investment and employment at the treated plant, this increase is offset by a decrease at other plants of the same magnitude, consistent with headquarters channeling scarce resources away from other plants and toward the treated plant. As a result of the resource reallocation, aggregate firm-wide productivity increases, suggesting that the reallocation is beneficial for the firm as a whole. We also show that-in order to provide the treated plant with scarce resources-headquarters does not uniformly "tax" all of the firm's other plants in the same way: It is more likely to take away resources from plants that are less productive, are not part of the firm's core industries, and are located far away from headquarters. We do not find any evidence of investment or employment spillovers at financially unconstrained firms.
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  • Working Paper

    Soft Information and Investment: Evidence from Plant-Level Data

    October 2010

    Authors: Xavier Giroud

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-10-38R

    A reduction in travel time between headquarters and plants makes it easier for headquarters to monitor plants and gather 'soft' information--i.e., information that cannot be transmitted through non-personal means. Using a difference-in-differences methodology, I find that the introduction of new airline routes that reduce the travel time between headquarters and plants leads to an increase in plant-level investment of 8% to 9% and an increase in plants' total factor productivity of 1.3% to 1.4%. Consistent with the notion that a reduction in travel time makes it easier for headquarters to monitor plants and gather soft information, I find that my results are stronger: i) for plants whose headquarters are more time constrained; ii) for plants operating in soft-information industries; iii) during the earlier years of my sample period, when alternative, non-personal, means of monitoring and transmitting information were less developed; iv) for plants where information uncertainty is likely to be greater and soft information is likely to be more valuable, such as smaller plants and peripheral plants operating in industries that are not the firm's main industry.
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  • Working Paper

    Where Do Manufacturing Firms Locate Their Headquarters?

    October 2005

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-05-17

    Firms' headquarters [HQ] support their production activity, by gathering information and outsourcing business services, as well as, managing, evaluating, and coordinating internal firm activities. In search of locations for these functions, firms often separate the HQ function physically from their production facilities and construct stand-alone HQs. By locating its HQ in a large, service oriented metro area away from its production facilities, a firm may be better able to out-source service functions in that local metro market and also to gather information about market conditions for their products. However if the firm locates the HQ away from its production activity, that increases the coordination costs in managing plant activities. In this paper we empirically analyze the trade-off of these two considerations.
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  • Working Paper

    Micro and Macro Data Integration: The Case of Capital

    May 2005

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-05-02

    Micro and macro data integration should be an objective of economic measurement as it is clearly advantageous to have internally consistent measurement at all levels of aggregation ' firm, industry and aggregate. In spite of the apparently compelling arguments, there are few measures of business activity that achieve anything close to micro/macro data internal consistency. The measures of business activity that are arguably the worst on this dimension are capital stocks and flows. In this paper, we document, quantify and analyze the widely different approaches to the measurement of capital from the aggregate (top down) and micro (bottom up) perspectives. We find that recent developments in data collection permit improved integration of the top down and bottom up approaches. We develop a prototype hybrid method that exploits these data to improve micro/macro data internal consistency in a manner that could potentially lead to substantially improved measures of capital stocks and flows at the industry level. We also explore the properties of the micro distribution of investment. In spite of substantial data and associated measurement limitations, we show that the micro distributions of investment exhibit properties that are of interest to both micro and macro analysts of investment behavior. These findings help highlight some of the potential benefits of micro/macro data integration.
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  • Working Paper

    The Effects of Low-Valued Transactions on the Quality of U.S. International Export Estimates: 1994-1998

    August 2004

    Authors: Charles Ian Mead

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-04-11

    This paper uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau Annual Survey of Manufactures (ASM) to examine the effects that a growth of low-valued transactions likely has on the quality of export estimates provided in the U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services (FT-990) series. These transactions, valued at less than $2,500, do not legally require the filing of export declarations. As a result, they are often not captured in the administrative records data used to construct FT-990 estimates. By comparing industry-level estimates created from the ASM to related FT-990 estimates, this paper estimates that the undercounting of low-valued transactions in the FT-990 export series increases by roughly $30 billion over the period of 1994-1997. It also finds that regression analysis provides little insight into the undercounting issue as results are primarily driven by industries whose contributions to total manufacturing exports are small.
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  • Working Paper

    Spatial Organization of Firms: The Decision to Split Production and Administration

    February 2004

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-04-03

    A firm's production activities are often supported by non-production activities. Among these activities are administrative units including headquarters, which process information both within and between firms. Often firms physically separate such administrative units from their production activities and create stand alone Central Administrative Offices (CAO). However, having its activities in multiple locations potentially imposes significant internal firm face-to-face communication costs. What types of firms are more likely to separate out such functions? If firms do separate administration and production, where do they place CAOs and why? How often do firms open and close, or relocate CAOs? This paper documents such firms' decisions on their spatial organization by using micro-level data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
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  • Working Paper

    Factor Substitution In U.S. Manufacturing: Does Plant Size Matter

    April 1998

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-98-06

    We use micro data for 10,412 U.S. manufacturing plants to estimate the degrees of factor substitution by industry and by plant size. We find that (1) capital, labor, energy and materials are substitutes in production, and (2) the degrees of substitution among inputs are quite similar across plant sizes in a majority of industries. Two important implications of these findings are that (1) small plants are typically as flexible as large plants in factor substitution; consequently, economic policies such energy conservation policies that result in rising energy prices would not cause negative effects on either large or small U.S. manufacturing plants; and (2) since energy and capital are found to be substitutes; the 1973 energy crisis is unlikely to be a significant factor contributing to the post 1973 productivity slowdown. of Substitution
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  • Working Paper

    Capital-Energy Substitution Revisted: New Evidence From Micro Data

    April 1997

    Working Paper Number:

    CES-97-04

    We use new micro data for 11,520 plants taken from the Census Bureau=s 1991 Manufacturing Energy Consumption Survey (MECS) and 1991 Annual Survey of Manufactures (ASM) to estimate elasticities of substitution between energy and capital. We found that energy and capital are substitutes. We also found that estimates of Allen elasticities of substitution -- which have been used as a standard measure of substitution -- are sensitive to varying data sets and levels of aggregation. In contrast, estimates of Morishima elasticities of substitution -- which are theoretically superior to the Allen elasticities -- are more robust (except when two-digit level data are used). The results support the views that (i) the Morishima elasticity is a better measure of factor substitution and (ii) micro data provide more accurate elasticity estimates than those obtained from aggregate data. Our findings appear to resolve the long-standing conflict among the estimates reported in the many previous studies regarding energy-capital substitution/complementarity.
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