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CES-WP-08-40 Manufacturing Plants' Use of Temporary Workers: An Analysis Using Census Micro Data Yukako Ono, Daniel Sullivan December 01, 2008 Using plant-level data from the Plant Capacity Utilization (PCU) Survey, we examine how manufacturing plants’ use of temporary workers is associated with the nature of their output fluctuations and other plant characteristics. We find that plants tend to hire temporary workers when their output can be expected to fall, a result consistent with the notion that firms use temporary workers to reduce costs associated with dismissing permanent employees. In addition, we find that plants whose future output levels are subject to greater uncertainty tend to use more temporary workers. We also examine the effects of wage and benefit levels for permanent workers, unionization rates, turnover rates, seasonal factors, and plant size and age on the use of temporary workers; based on our results, we discuss various views of why firms use temporary workers. 41 Pages 193401 Bytes View Paper

CES-WP-08-39 Gender Differences in Business Performance: Evidence from the Characteristics of Business Owners Survey Robert Fairlie, Alicia Robb December 01, 2008 Using confidential microdata from the U.S. Census Bureau, we investigate the performance of female-owned businesses making comparisons to male-owned businesses. Using regression estimates and a decomposition technique, we explore the role that human capital, especially through prior work experience, and financial capital play in contributing to why female-owned businesses have lower survival rates, profits, employment and sales. We find that female-owned businesses are less successful than male-owned businesses because they have less startup capital, and business human capital acquired through prior work experience in a similar business and prior work experience in family business. We also find some evidence that femaleowned businesses work fewer hours and may have different preferences for the goals of their business. 51 Pages 144184 Bytes View Paper

CES-WP-08-38 Measuring Labor Earnings Inequality Using Public-Use March Current Population Survey Data: The Value of Including Variances and Cell Means When Imputing Topcoded Values Richard Burkhauser, Shuaizhang Feng, Jeff Larrimore November 01, 2008 Using the Census Bureau’s internal March Current Population Surveys (CPS) file, we construct and make available variances and cell means for all topcoded income values in the publicuse version of these data. We then provide a procedure that allows researchers with access only to the public-use March CPS data to take advantage of this added information when imputing its topcoded income values. As an example of its value we show how our new procedure improves on existing imputation methods in the labor earnings inequality literature. 39 Pages 230095 Bytes View Paper

CES-WP-08-37 Local Industrial Conditions and Entrepreneurship: How Much of the Spatial Distribution Can We Explain? Edward Glaeser, William Kerr October 01, 2008 Why are some places more entrepreneurial than others? We use Census Bureau data to study local determinants of manufacturing startups across cities and industries. Demo- graphics have limited explanatory power. Overall levels of local customers and suppliers are only modestly important, but new entrants seem particularly drawn to areas with many smaller suppliers, as suggested by Chinitz (1961). Abundant workers in relevant occupations also strongly predict entry. These forces plus city and industry fixed effects explain between sixty and eighty percent of manufacturing entry. We use spatial distributions of natural cost advantages to address partially endogeneity concerns. 52 Pages 377518 Bytes View Paper

CES-WP-08-36 Linking Investment Spikes and Productivity Growth: U.S. Food Manufacturing Industry Pinar Celikkol Geylani, Spiro Stefanou October 01, 2008 We investigate the relationship between productivity growth and investment spikes using Census Bureau’s plant-level data set for the U.S. food manufacturing industry. We find that productivity growth increases after investment spikes suggesting an efficiency gain or plants’ learning effect. However, efficiency and the learning period associated with investment spikes differ among plants’ productivity quartile ranks implying the differences in the plants’ investment types such as expansionary, replacement or retooling. We find evidence of both convex and non-convex types of adjustment costs where lumpy plant-level investments suggest the possibility of non-convex adjustment costs and hazard estimation results suggest the possibility of convex adjustment costs. The downward sloping hazard can be due to the unobserved heterogeneity across plants such as plants’ idiosyncratic obsolescence caused by different R&D capabilities and implies the existence of convex adjustment costs. Food plants frequently invest during their first few years of operation and high productivity plants postpone investing due to high fixed costs. 52 Pages 243480 Bytes View Paper

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