The Deaths of Manufacturing Plants

This paper examines the causes of manufacturing plant deaths within and across industries in the U.S. from 1977-1997. The effects of international competition from low wage countries, exporting, ownership structure, product diversity, productivity, geography, and plant characteristics are considered. The probability of shutdowns is higher in industries that face increased competition from low-income countries, especially for low-wage, labor-intensive plants within those industries. Conditional on industry and plant characteristics, closures occur more often at plants that are part of a multi-plant firm and at plants that have recently experienced a change in ownership. Plants owned by U.S. multinationals are more likely to close than similar plants at non-multinational firms. Exits occur less frequently at multi-product plants, at exporters, at plants that pay above average wages, and at large, older, more productive and more capital-intensive plants.

Firm Structure, Multinationals, and Manufacturing Plant Deaths

Plant shutdowns shape industry productivity, the dynamics of employment, and industrial restructuring. Plant closures account for more than half of gross job destruction in US manufacturing. This paper examines the effects of firm structure on US manufacturing plant closures. Plants belonging to multi-plant firms and those owned by US multinationals are less likely to exit. However, the superior survival chances are due to the characteristics of the plants rather than the nature of the firms. Controlling for plant and industry attributes, we find that plants owned by multi-unit firms and US multinationals are much more likely to close.Exit, shutdown, closure, multi-plant firms, multinational firms, takeovers, entry costs, agglomeration, specialization

Understanding the U.S. Export Boom

U.S. exports grew at a rate of 8.2% per year from 1987-1994, far faster than the economy as a whole or even the manufacturing sector. This paper examines the source of this export boom and argues that the boom itself has been less remarkable for the rate of growth of exports than for the striking increase in export intensity. This increase in export intensity has occurred both in the aggregate and for individual plants across a wide range of industries. Competing explanations for the rise in exports are tested with a comprehensive plant level data set. Changes in exchange rates and rises in foreign income are the dominant sources for the export increase, while productivity increases in U.S. plants play a relatively small role. The results suggest that slower growth rates of U.S. trading partners and an appreciation of the dollar will have strong negative effects on the growth rate of U.S. manufacturing exports.

Who Dies? International Trade, Market Structure, and Industrial Restructuring

This paper examines the role of changing factor endowments in the growth and decline of industries and regions. The implications of an endowment-based Heckscher-Ohlin trade model for plant entry and exit are tested on 20 years of data for the entire US manufacturing sector. The trade model provides predictions for which industries will see growth through the positive net entry of plants. A multi-region version of the same model has predictions for which regions will see high turnover and net entry of plants. In a country such as the U.S. that is augmenting both its physical and human capital, the least capital-intensive, least skill-intensive industries are correctly predicted to have the lowest rate of net entry. In addition, increases in regional capital and skill intensity are associated with higher probabilities of shutdown, especially for plants in industries with low initial capital and skill intensities.

On the existence of the critical point in finite density lattice QCD

We propose a method to probe the nature of phase transitions in lattice QCD at finite temperature and density, which is based on the investigation of an effective potential as a function of the average plaquette. We analyze data obtained in a simulation of two-flavor QCD using p4-improved staggered quarks with bare quark mass $m/T = 0.4$, and find that a first order phase transition line appears in the high density regime for \mu_q/T \simge 2.5. We also discuss the difference between the phase structures of QCD with non-zero quark chemical potential and non-zero isospin chemical potential.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figure

PAH Strength and the Interstellar Radiation Field around the Massive Young Cluster NGC3603

We present spatial distribution of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and ionized gas within the Galactic giant HII region NGC3603. Using the IRS instrument on board the Spitzer Space Telescope, we study in particular the PAH emission features at ~5.7, 6.2, 7.7, 8.6, and 11.3um, and the [ArII] 6.99um, [NeII] 12.81um, [ArIII] 8.99um, and [SIV] 10.51um forbidden emission lines. The observations probe both ionized regions and photodissociation regions. Silicate emission is detected close to the central cluster while silicate absorption is seen further away. We find no significant variation of the PAH ionization fraction across the whole region. The emission of very small grains lies closer to the central stellar cluster than emission of PAHs. The PAH/VSG ratio anticorrelates with the hardness of the interstellar radiation field suggesting a destruction mechanism of the molecules within the ionized gas, as shown for low-metallicity galaxies by Madden et al. (2006).Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. Corrected typo

Heavy-Light Semileptonic Decays in Staggered Chiral Perturbation Theory

We calculate the form factors for the semileptonic decays of heavy-light pseudoscalar mesons in partially quenched staggered chiral perturbation theory (\schpt), working to leading order in $1/m_Q$, where $m_Q$ is the heavy quark mass. We take the light meson in the final state to be a pseudoscalar corresponding to the exact chiral symmetry of staggered quarks. The treatment assumes the validity of the standard prescription for representing the staggered ``fourth root trick'' within \schpt by insertions of factors of 1/4 for each sea quark loop. Our calculation is based on an existing partially quenched continuum chiral perturbation theory calculation with degenerate sea quarks by Becirevic, Prelovsek and Zupan, which we generalize to the staggered (and non-degenerate) case. As a by-product, we obtain the continuum partially quenched results with non-degenerate sea quarks. We analyze the effects of non-leading chiral terms, and find a relation among the coefficients governing the analytic valence mass dependence at this order. Our results are useful in analyzing lattice computations of form factors $B\to\pi$ and $D\to K$ when the light quarks are simulated with the staggered action.Comment: 53 pages, 8 figures, v2: Minor correction to the section on finite volume effects, and typos fixed. Version to be published in Phys. Rev.

On the Birth of Isolas

Isolas are isolated, closed curves of solution branches of nonlinear problems. They have been observed to occur in the buckling of elastic shells, the equilibrium states of chemical reactors and other problems. In this paper we present a theory to describe analytically the structure of a class of isolas. Specifically, we consider isolas that shrink to a point as a parameter τ of the problem, approaches a critical value τ_0. The point is referred to as an isola center. Equations that characterize the isola centers are given. Then solutions are constructed in a neighborhood of the isola centers by perturbation expansions in a small parameter ε that is proportional to (τ-τo), with a appropriately determined. The theory is applied to a chemical reactor problem