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

公司将业务转移到对他们的业务更有利的地方。 州和地方政府之间为吸引企业而展开的竞争，引起了经济学家以及立法者和政策制定者对影响企业制造活动迁移的问题的极大兴趣。 只有少数研究关注制造业公司如何在地理上定位其生产，其中大多数研究都是从制造业或小地理区域的小样本中进行的。 作为一项初步研究，本论文的研究总结了1972-1992年期间，美国制造业的工厂搬迁和搬迁后的表现的模式，使用非公开的工厂和企业层面的数据从纵向研究数据库（LRD）或制造业普查（CM）。 本研究以个别企业的迁移决策为研究对象，对以下三个子项目中的企业生产活动迁移信息进行了列表分析。 首先，本研究通过构建行业层面的进入、迁移和退出措施，评估了跨行业和跨地区迁移的相对重要性。 该研究探讨了搬迁是否显示出不同的模式，在工厂的开放和关闭相比，从头进入和永久退出。第二，研究了搬迁厂的特点和搬迁决策。 为了分析单个企业生产过程地理转移的特征，研究重点是现有企业在新地点生产产品的新生产设施。 基于计量经济学模型的估计将展示税收、工会化、要素价格、所有权以及其他地理和工厂具体特征如何影响搬迁决策。 第三，研究调查的影响，地理转移的企业，通过比较的产量和生产率的增长率为新搬迁的工厂，那些在原来的位置，现有的工厂。 Jovanovic（1982）的企业学习模型提出的逆增长年龄关系进行了测试搬迁工厂，以检查是否逆增长年龄关系中观察到的年轻企业也适用于搬迁工厂，开始在一个新的空间。

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.