Call for Papers

Producer Dynamics: New Evidence from Micro Data
Sponsored by the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth

	The CRIW will sponsor a two-day conference on the measurement and analyses of producer dynamics.  The conference program will include components that deal with the measurement of producer turnover, comparability issues across data sources, and analyses of the causes or implications of the entry and exit process.  Entry and exit are defined broadly to encompass movements of producers between product markets, geographic markets, and international borders as well as consolidations and expansions through mergers or acquisitions.  Analysis of the difference between firm and plant transitions and of worker transitions from employee to employer status are also of interest. 

	The timing of the conference is motivated, in part, by the development of new longitudinal micro-data sets that provide much more comprehensive coverage of U.S. firms and plants than has been previously available.  These include the Longitudinal Business Database (LBD) constructed at the Center for Economic Studies of the Census Bureau, the longitudinal data set constructed from state unemployment insurance records at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the matched worker-employer database under construction as part of the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD)  program at the Census Bureau.  Studies using these data sets, as well as other longitudinal data sources on establishments and firms from the U.S. or other countries, are of interest.

	The conference will take place in April 2005 in Washington, D.C., with a pre-conference for the paper presenters at the NBER Summer Institute on July 23, 2004.   The program committee consists of Timothy Dunne (University of Oklahoma), J. Bradford Jensen (Institute for International Economics), and Mark J. Roberts (The Pennsylvania State University).
  
	The program committee welcomes submissions of abstracts for consideration for inclusion in the program.  Topics of interest include the following:

Papers on the measurement of producer entry and exit under different data systems.  This includes comparison of entry and exit patterns at different frequencies, in firm-level vs.  establishment level data, and across survey instruments used in different countries.

Papers on the extent of producer turnover in different dimensions.  This includes diversification across product markets, geographic markets, and international boundaries, the extent of new firm formation, and the role of mergers and acquisitions of existing producers as a source of firm liquidation.  Of particular interest are papers that address measurement issues in the retail, wholesale, and service sectors.

Papers on the economic causes and implications of producer turnover.  This includes studies of the relationship between turnover and market competition, sectoral growth in output or productivity, producer investment in physical capital, human capital, and R&D, and economies of producer agglomeration.
  
To be considered for the conference program abstracts should be submitted by March 1, 2004 to:

Conference Department, NBER
1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 12138
Tel: (617) 868-3900, Fax: (617) 864-1825
Email: confer@nber.org
(Please send electronic submissions in either .pdf, Word or Word Perfect files, U.S. paper format only)