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Working Paper
Outstanding outsourcers: a firm- and plant-level analysis of production sharing
This paper examines the differences in characteristics between outsourcers and non-outsourcers with a particular focus on productivity. The measure of outsourcing comes from a question in the 1987 and 1992 Census of Manufactures regarding plant-level purchases of foreign intermediate materials. There are two key findings. First, outsourcers are "outstanding." That is, all else equal, outsourcers tend to have premia for plant and firm characteristics, such as being larger, more capital intensive, and more productive. One exception to this outsourcing premia is that wages tend to be the same ...
Report
Have amenities become relatively more important than firm productivity advantages in metropolitan areas?
We analyze patterns of compensating differentials to determine whether a region's bundle of site characteristics has a greater net effect on household location decisions relative to firm location decisions in U.S. metropolitan areas over time. We estimate skill-adjusted wages and attribute-adjusted rents using hedonic regressions for 238 metropolitan areas in 1990 and 2000. Within the framework of the standard Roback model, we classify each metropolitan area based on whether amenities or firm productivity advantages dominate and analyze the extent to which these classifications change between ...
Journal Article
Current level of economic activity
Journal Article
Recent business developments
Working Paper
Forecasting industrial production using models with business cycle asymmetry
This paper exploits business cycle asymmetry observed in data, namely, a systematic shift in the dynamic relationship between the output and the interest rate spread across expansionary and contractionary periods in forecasting monthly industrial production. A bivariate model of monthly industrial production and the spread between the 6-month commercial paper and the federal funds rates is used as an example to illustrate forecast exercise. This paper's method does not require a forecaster to make an exact ex-ante determination of turning points in the output series which is being forecasted. ...
Journal Article
Industrial production and capacity utilization annual revision and 1997 developments
In December 1997, the Board of Governors published the results of an annual revision of its measures of industrial production and capacity utilization, which cover the nation's manufacturing, mining, and electric and gas utilities industries. The revision entailed primarily the incorporation of new and more comprehensive source data, the most important of which were annual figures on industry real output in 1995 and survey information on industry utilization rates for the fourth quarters of 1995 and 1996. The revised measures show stronger growth of production and capacity and lower rates of ...
Journal Article
The rise in prices
Working Paper
Productivity and the geographic concentration of industry: the role of plant scale
A large body of research has established a positive connection between an industry's productivity and the magnitude of its presence within locally defined geographic areas. This paper examines the extent to which this relationship can be explained by a micro-level underpinning commonly associated with productivity: establishment scale. Looking at data on two-digit manufacturing across a sample of U.S. metropolitan areas, I find two primary results. First, average plant size - defined in terms of numbers of workers - increases substantially as an industry's employment in a metropolitan area ...
Report
Industry restructuring measures and productivity: evidence from the 1980s
This paper analyzes the empirical relationship between corporate restructuring and productivity. We estimate neoclassical production functions and factor demand functions to analyze the importance of restructuring in improving resource allocation and productivity. We find, at most, restructuring may have spurred the substitution of capital for labor in some industries, helping to set the stage for increased labor productivity. However, there is little evidence that restructurings, themselves, aided in the improvement of true technological progress.
Working Paper
Output gaps
What is the output gap? There are many definitions in the economics literature, all of which have a long history. I discuss three alternatives: the deviation of output from its long-run stochastic trend (i.e., the "Beveridge-Nelson cycle"); the deviation of output from the level consistent with current technologies and normal utilization of capital and labor input (i.e., the "production-function approach"); and the deviation of output from "flexible-price" output (i.e., its "natural rate"). Estimates of each concept are presented from a dynamic-stochastic-general-equilibrium (DSGE) ...