Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: The Importance of Relocations in U.S. Manufacturing

公司将业务转移到对其业务更有利的地方。州和地方政府之间为吸引企业而展开的竞争，吸引了经济学家、立法者和政策制定者对影响企业制造活动搬迁的问题的极大兴趣。只有少数研究关注了制造企业如何在地理上定位其生产，而且大多数研究只关注了来自制造业或小地理区域的小样本。作为初步研究，本文利用来自纵向研究数据库（LRD）或制造业普查（CM）的非公开工厂和企业层面的数据，总结了1972-1992年期间美国制造业工厂搬迁的模式和搬迁后的绩效。本研究着眼于单个企业的搬迁决策，在以下三个子项目中对企业制造活动的搬迁信息进行了制表和分析。首先，通过构建产业层面的产业进入、产业转移和产业退出测度，评估产业转移的相对重要性。该研究考察了搬迁是否在工厂的开放和关闭中显示出与重新进入和永久退出相比的不同模式。其次，研究了搬迁工厂的特点和搬迁决策。为了分析个别企业生产过程的地理转移特征，本研究将重点放在现有企业在新地点生产产品的新生产设施上。基于计量经济模型的估算将展示税收、工会组织、要素价格、所有权以及其他地理和工厂特定特征如何影响搬迁决策。第三，通过比较新搬迁工厂与原址现有工厂的产量和生产率增长率，研究了地理转移对企业的影响。我们对Jovanovic（1982）的企业学习模型提出的成长-年龄逆关系进行了检验，以检验在年轻企业中观察到的成长-年龄逆关系是否也适用于在新空间重新开始的搬迁工厂。

Firms move operations to locations that are more favorable for their business. Competition among state and local governments to lure businesses has attracted considerable interest from economists, as well as legislators and policy makers, regarding issues influencing relocation of firms' manufacturing activities. Only a few studies have looked at how manufacturing firms geographically locate their production, and most of them have looked at small samples from manufacturing or small geographic regions. For an initial study, this dissertation research summarizes the patterns of plant relocation and the post-move performance of relocated plants in the U.S. manufacturing industries over the period 1972-1992 using non-publicly available plant and firm level data from the Longitudinal Research Database (LRD) or the Census of Manufactures (CM). Focusing on an individual firm's decision to relocate, this research tabulates and analyzes information on the relocation of firm's manufacturing activities in the following three subprojects. First, the research assesses the relative importance of the relocation across industries and regions by constructing industry level measures of entry, relocation, and exit. The study examines if relocation shows different patterns in plant openings and closings compared to de novo entry and permanent exit. Second, the research studies the characteristics of relocated plants and the decision to relocate. To analyze characteristics of individual firms' geographic shifts of production process, the research focuses on new production facilities for existing firms to produce a product in a new location. Estimation based on econometric models will demonstrate how taxes, unionization, factor prices, ownership, and other geographic and plant specific characteristics affect the relocation decision. Third, the research investigates the impact of geographic shifts on the firms by comparing the growth rates of output and productivity for newly relocated plants to those for existing plants in the original location. The inverse growth-age relation suggested by Jovanovic's (1982) firm-learning model is tested for relocating plants to examine whether the inverse growth-age relation observed among young firms holds also for the relocating plants that start over in a new space.