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Working Paper
The Energy Boom and Manufacturing in the United States
This paper examines the response of U.S. manufacturers to changes in competitiveness brought about by movements in the price of natural gas. I estimate the response of various measures of manufacturing activity using panel regression methods across roughly 80 industries that allow each industry's response to vary with its energy intensity. These estimates suggest that the fall in the price of natural gas since 2006 is associated with a 2 to 3 percent increase in activity for the entire manufacturing sector, with much larger effects of 30 percent or more for the most energy intensive ...
Globally Competitive Texas Exports Sensitive to U.S. Trade Policy
Texas, the nation’s largest exporting state, enjoys a strong position in world trade. The state continues to see exports climb, and it exhibits a manufacturing edge in energy-related products and intermediate goods based on an index of comparative advantage.
Mounting Signs Point to a Texas Economic Slowdown
The most recent jobs report showed state employment was flat in August. The unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.1 percent (from 4.0 percent in July), and labor force and wage growth also eased.
Discussion Paper
A Crooked Road to a Creative Economy
The Crooked Road trail celebrates the cultural history of Appalachian music and arts. In 2015, it was estimated to bring $6.4 million in tourism spending to the region annually and continues to promote growth in southwest Virginia’s tourism industry today.
Working Paper
Are Manufacturing Jobs Still Good Jobs? An Exploration of the Manufacturing Wage Premium
This paper explores the factors behind differences in wages between manufacturing and other sectors. Using data from the Current Population Survey, we find that the manufacturing wage premium--the additional pay a manufacturing worker earns relative to a comparable nonmanufacturing worker--disappeared in recent years and that the erosion of the premium has primarily affected workers employed in production occupations, who experienced a wage decline of 2.5 percentage points since the 1990s relative to other workers in production occupations. While the demographic composition and other worker ...
Working Paper
The Surprisingly Swift Decline of U.S. Manufacturing Employment
This paper finds a link between the sharp drop in U.S. manufacturing employment beginning in 2001 and a change in U.S. trade policy that eliminated potential tariff increases on Chinese imports. Industries where the threat of tariff hikes declines the most experience more severe employment losses along with larger increases in the value of imports from China and the number of firms engaged in China-U.S. trade. These results are robust to other potential explanations of the employment loss, and we show that the U.S. employment trends differ from those in the E.U., where there was no change in ...
Working Paper
Choices and Implications when Measuring the Local Supply of Prescription Opioids
Despite the growth in the literature on the opioid crisis, questions remain on how to best measure the local supply of prescription opioids. We document that measures based on the number of prescriptions largely track hydrocodone, while measures based on morphine-equivalent amounts largely track oxycodone. This choice matters, given the well-documented link between oxycodone and the rise in use of illicit opioids such as heroin, plus the fact that oxycodone and hydrocodone (the two most common prescription opioids) are only weakly correlated. We recommend local measures of the supply of ...
Working Paper
Investment Responses to Trade Liberalization : Evidence from U.S. Industries and Establishments
This paper examines the effect of a change in U.S. trade policy on the domestic investment of U.S. manufacturers. Using a difference-in-differences identification strategy, we find that industries more exposed to reductions in import tariff uncertainty exhibit relative declines in investment after the change in trade policy. Within industries, we find that this relationship is concentrated among establishments with low initial levels of labor productivity, capital intensity and skill intensity. For plants with high initial levels of skill intensity, we find that increased exposure is ...
Journal Article
Introducing the Philadelphia Fed nonmanufacturing survey
To assess the health of the economy, it sometimes helps to look beyond the numbers and listen directly to business managers. That is why the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and a handful of other regional Reserve Banks and private firms such as the Institute for Supply Management conduct a variety of monthly surveys of business activity. Such qualitative surveys offer the advantage of providing timelier insight into economic activity prior to the official monthly employment and quarterly gross domestic product data releases as well as insight into regional and local trends. And now ...
Journal Article
Nebraska manufacturing and housing press onward