Working Paper
Exports, borders, distance, and plant size
Stevens, John J.; Holmes, Thomas J. (2010)
The fact that large manufacturing plants export relatively more than small plants has been at the foundation of much work in the international trade literature. We examine this fact using Census micro data on plant shipments from the Commodity Flow Survey. We show the fact is not entirely an international trade phenomenon; part of it can be accounted for by the effect of distance, distinct from any border effect. Export destinations tend to be further than domestic destinations, and large plants tend to ship further distances even to domestic locations, as compared with small plants. We ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2010-38

Working Paper
Growing old together: firm survival and employee turnover
Quintin, Erwan; Stevens, John J. (2005)
Labor market outcomes such as turnover and earnings are correlated with employer characteristics, even after controlling for observable differences in worker characteristics. We argue that this systematic relationship constitutes strong evidence in favor of models where workers choose how much to invest in future productivity. Because employer characteristics are correlated with firm survival, returns to these investments vary across firm types. We describe a dynamic general equilibrium model where workers employed in firms more likely to survive choose to devote more time to productivity ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2005-22

Working Paper
Firm specific human capital vs. job matching: a new test
Quintin, Erwan; Stevens, John J. (2003)
We use a unique data set on employee turnover by industry in Arizona to test competing theories of turnover. We find that industries with lower establishment survival rates have more employee turnover, even after controlling for differences in the distribution of employee tenure. This result is consistent with a model of turnover where employees choose how much firm specific human capital to accumulate, but it is inconsistent with job matching models.
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2003-33

Working Paper
Geographic concentration and establishment size: analysis in an alternative economic geography model
Stevens, John J.; Holmes, Thomas J. (2002)
Big cities specialize in services rather than manufacturing. Big-city establishments in services are larger than the national average while those in manufacturing are smaller. This paper proposes an explanation of these and other facts. The theory is developed in an economic geography model that is an alternative to the standard Dixit-Stiglitz structure. In our tractable structure that has potentially wider application, firms have monopoly power in local markets, but are price takers in export markets.
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2002-17

Working Paper
Early-Stage Business Formation : An Analysis of Applications for Employer Identification Numbers
Dunne, Timothy; Bayard, Kimberly; Haltiwanger, John; Dinlersoz, Emin M.; Stevens, John J.; Miranda, Javier (2018-03-05)
This paper reports on the development and analysis of a newly constructed dataset on the early stages of business formation. The data are based on applications for Employer Identification Numbers (EINs) submitted in the United States, known as IRS Form SS-4 filings. The goal of the research is to develop high-frequency indicators of business formation at the national, state, and local levels. The analysis indicates that EIN applications provide forward-looking and very timely information on business formation. The signal of business formation provided by counts of applications is improved by ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2018-015

Working Paper
Raising the bar for models of turnover
Quintin, Erwan; Stevens, John J. (2005)
It is well known that turnover rates fall with employee tenure and employer size. We document a new empirical fact about turnover: Among surviving employers, separation rates are positively related to industry-level exit rates, even after controlling for tenure and size. Specifically, in a dataset with over 13 million matched employee-employer observations for France, we find that, all else equal, a 1 percentage point increase in exit rates raises separation rates by 1/2 percentage point on average. Among current year hires, the average effect is twice as large. This relationship between exit ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2005-23

Working Paper
Do long-haul truckers undervalue future fuel savings?
Adenbaum, Jacob; Stevens, John J.; Copeland, Adam (2015-12-29)
The U.S. federal government enacted fuel efficiency standards for medium and heavy trucks for the first time in September 2011. Rationales for using this policy tool typically depend upon frictions existing in the marketplace or consumers being myopic, such that vehicle purchasers undervalue the future fuel savings from increased fuel efficiency. We measure by how much long-haul truck owners undervalue future fuel savings by employing recent advances to the classic hedonic approach to estimate the distribution of willingness-to-pay for fuel efficiency. We find significant heterogeneity in ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2015-118

Report
An alternative theory of the plant size distribution with an application to trade
Stevens, John J.; Holmes, Thomas J. (2010)
There is wide variation in the sizes of manufacturing plants, even within the most narrowly defined industry classifications used by statistical agencies. Standard theories attribute all such size differences to productivity differences. This paper develops an alternative theory in which industries are made up of large plants producing standardized goods and small plants making custom or specialty goods. It uses confidential Census data to estimate the parameters of the model, including estimates of plant counts in the standardized and specialty segments by industry. The estimated model fits ...
Staff Report , Paper 445

Working Paper
Diverging measures of capacity utilization: an explanation
Stevens, John J.; Morin, Norman J. (2004)
In the wake of the recent recovery in manufacturing production, the capacity utilization rates published by the Federal Reserve Board (FRB) have rebounded much more slowly than those published by the Institute for Supply Management (ISM). As a result, some observers have speculated that the manufacturing sector may have considerably less slack than is indicated by the FRB measures. Our view is that the two characterizations of manufacturing slack are not as incongruent as they first appear. This paper discusses the practical and conceptual differences between these measures of capacity ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2004-58

Working Paper
Estimating capacity utilization from survey data
Stevens, John J.; Morin, Norman J. (2004)
In this paper, we review the history and concepts behind the Federal Reserve's measures of capacity and capacity utilization, summarize the methods used to construct the measures, and describe the principal source data for these measures--the Census Bureau's Survey of Plant Capacity. We show that the aggregate manufacturing utilization rate from the Survey of Plant Capacity does not exhibit the "cyclical bias" possessed by utilization rates from the less statistically rigorous utilization rate surveys previously used to estimate the Federal Reserve's measures. At the detailed industry ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2004-49