In a seminal article, Benjamin Chinitz (1961) focused attention on the effects that industry size, structure, and economic diversification have on firm performance and regional economies. He also raised a related but conceptually distinct question that has been overlooked since: … Read More

Economists have noted that the quality of imputed data is a problem for researchers using plant-level Annual Survey of Manufactures (ASM) and Census of Manufactures data. Using the detailed item impute flags in the later years of the ASM, this … Read More

This project extends the time frame and scope of the projects Comparison of the Distributions of Production and Energy Efficiency in Manufacturing: Phase 1 and Phase 2, respectively. Those projects successfully implemented the methods described in prior project proposals for … Read More

This study investigates how place, race, and ethnicity intertwine to produce the spatial division of ethnic enterprises in different types of metropolitan areas in the U.S.—established immigration gateways versus newly emergent immigration destinations. The project uses the Survey of Business … Read More

The present study is based on prior work that studied the financial performance of a sample of leveraged buyouts (LBO) and going-private transactions occurring between 1978 and 1989. That project identified shortcomings of census data collection programs by comparing Census … Read More

This study investigates how changes in state banking laws affect firms’ access to credit, asset accumulation, and economic performance. Work will focus on manufacturing firms but will also investigate how banking law changes affect other sectors of the economy. The … Read More

This research examines how financial constraints affect firm behavior and how a financially constrained firm’s employees conditionally influence the impact of those constraints. Types of constraints studied here include restricted access to commercial bank credit, venture capital financing, and public … Read More

This research continues work conducted under prior projects, conducting both cross-sectional and time-series analyses of the underlying causes of changes in the distributions of production and energy efficiency. The principal analytic approach will be the application of frontier production functions … Read More

This project uses internal Census Bureau microdata, as well as inspection data from the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), to study the effects of product differentiation and regulatory compliance on the vertical integration of select production processes within a … Read More

This project will examine the effects of electronic commerce (e-commerce) on particular retail and services industries. The researchers will investigate the diverse impact of e-commerce on the different types of traditional establishments that operate within an industry. In particular, the … Read More