Search Results
Working Paper
Measuring temporary labor outsourcing in U.S. manufacturing
Several analysts claim that firms have been using more flexible work arrangements in order to contain the costly adjustment of labor to changes in economic conditions. In particular, temporary help supply (THS) employment has increased dramatically in the last ten years. However, there is only scant evidence on the industries that are hiring this type of worker. In particular, some anecdotal evidence points to the fact that manufacturing industries have substantially stepped up their demand for THS workers since the mid-1980s. If this is true, not accounting for this flow of workers from the ...
Working Paper
Is \"learning-by-exporting\" important? Micro-dynamic evidence from Colombia, Mexico and Morocco
Is there any empirical evidence that firms become more efficient after becoming exporters? Do firms that become exporters generate positive spillovers for domestically-oriented producers in their industry or region? In this paper we analyze the causal links between exporting and productivity using firm-level panel data from three semi-industrialized economies. Representing export market participation and production costs as jointly dependent autoregressive processes, we look for evidence that firms' stochastic cost process shifts when they break into foreign markets. We find that relatively ...
Working Paper
R&D, investment and industry dynamics
Working Paper
The evolution of the demand for temporary help supply employment in the United States
The level of temporary help supply (THS) employment surged during the late 1980s and the 1990s. However, we know little about where these workers were placed and, thus, there is a gap in our understanding of cyclical and trend industry employment in the U.S. To close this gap, we estimate the proportion of THS employees in each major U.S. industry during 1977-97 using information from input-output tables and from the Contingent Worker Supplements to the CPS surveys of February 1995 and February 1997. Our estimates indicate that almost all of the growth in THS employment is attributed to a ...
Working Paper
Product innovation and the business cycle
Conference Paper
Incentives and invention in universities
We show that economic incentives affect the number and commercial value of inventions generated in universities. Using panel data for 102 U.S. universities during the period 1991-1999, we find that universities which give higher royalty shares to academic scientists generate more inventions and higher license income, controlling for other factors including university size, quality, research funding and technology licensing inputs. The incentive effects are much larger in private universities than in public ones. For private institutions there is a Laffer curve effect: raising the inventor?s ...