Search Results
Journal Article
Regional productivity growth and plant-level dynamics
The mix of companies in the economy is always changing. The more-productive ones expand, and the less-productive ones are driven out of the market, freeing resources such as labor and capital for new ventures. This reallocation contributes more to aggregate productivity growth than the productivity gains achieved by individual businesses. The efficiency with which the process takes place is a key factor affecting rates of productivity growth in different regions and explaining why they differ.
Journal Article
Monetary policy and firm entry and exit
Yoonsoo Lee and Willem Van Zandweghe find unusually accommodative monetary policy reduces the reallocation of capital and workers from exiting firms to new ones, potentially slowing productivity growth.
Journal Article
Labor productivity growth across states
Labor productivity growth, a measure of output per unit of work, is closely tied to gains in wages and living standards, and it provides a direct measure of a country?s competitive position over time. The same holds true for states. Since the last business cycle peak in 2000, states boosted their average labor productivity growth to 2.3 percent. In Ohio, this growth came as a result of modest output growth accompanied by sharp employment losses. Although this has been a painful transition for the Fourth District, solid productivity gains have made the remaining firms and workers more ...
Working Paper
Cross-sectoral variation in firm-level idiosyncratic risk
In this paper we use data from the U.S. Census Bureau?s Longitudinal Research Database in order to assess the extent of the cross-sectoral variation in firm-level idiosyncratic risk and shed light on its determinants. We find that firms producing investment goods exhibit greater volatility in sales and TFP growth than firms producing consumption goods. Our data suggests that this may be the case because winner?takes?all competition is more common for the former than for the latter.
Working Paper
The importance of reallocations in cyclical productivity and returns to scale: evidence from plant-level data
Procyclical productivity plays an important role in many models of aggregate fluctuations. However, recent studies using aggregate data to directly measure technology shocks in the Solow residual find that technology shocks are not procyclical. This paper provides new evidence that, due to countercyclical composition changes between producers, the procyclicality of productivity observed in aggregate data may be understated. Using plant-level microdata, this paper finds that the reallocation of output shares across continuing plants, as well as the entry and exit of plants, creates a ...
Journal Article
Employment growth, job creation, and job destruction in Ohio
Over the past several years, Ohio?s employment has grown much more slowly than the national average. If we look at patterns of job creation and destruction in the state, we can start to get a handle on why. In the late 1990s, not only was the rate of job creation sluggish relative to the nation, but the rate of job destruction climbed rapidly.
Discussion Paper
Estimating GSP and labor productivity by state
In gauging the health of state economies, arguably the two most important series to track are employment and output. While employment by state is available about three weeks after the end of a month, data on output, as measured by Gross State Product (GSP), are only available annually and with a significant lag. This Policy Discussion Paper details how more current estimates of GSP can be generated using U.S. Gross Domestic Product and personal income along with individual states personal income. A straightforward share approach yields reasonable GSP estimates, but a more sophisticated ...
Journal Article
Regional variation in job creation and destruction
As companies and consumers adapt to a changing marketplace, jobs are eliminated and new ones are created. Rates at which this happens vary across states and reflect the flexibility of the labor market. More flexible markets are associated with faster growth.
Working Paper
Entry, exit and plant-level dynamics over the business cycle
This paper analyzes the implications of plant-level dynamics over the business cycle. We first document basic patterns of entry and exit of U.S. manufacturing plants, in terms of employment and productivity between 1972 and 1997. We show how entry and exit patterns vary during the business cycle, and that the cyclical pattern of entry is very different from the cyclical pattern of exit. Second, we build a general equilibrium model of plant entry, exit, and employment and compare its predictions to the data. In our model, plants enter and exit endogenously, and the size and productivity of ...
Working Paper
Geographic redistribution of U.S. manufacturing and the role of state development policy
Competition among state and local governments to lure businesses has attracted considerable interest from economists, as well as legislators and policymakers. This paper quantifies the role of plant relocations in the geographic redistribution of manufacturing employment and examines the effectiveness of state development policy. Only a few studies have looked at how manufacturing firms geographically locate their production facilities and have used either small manufacturing samples or small geographic regions. This paper provides broader evidence of the impact of plant relocations using ...