The 1989 Change in the Definition of Capacity: A Plant-Level Perspective

Maura P Doyle

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: The Survey of Plant Capacity (SPC) is the primary source of data used to construct the Federal Reserve's manufacturing utilization rates. A major restructuring of the SPC in 1989 presents a potential obstacle to constructing measures of utilization that are consistent over time. The object of this study is to take advantage of plant-level data that is available at the Census Bureau's O±ce of the Chief Economist to thoroughly reexamine the link between the historical and current measures of capacity. The preponderance of evidence in this study suggests that preferred utilization is consistent with \full" utilization and, therefore, supports the underlying Federal Reserve methodology for estimating capacity utilization.

Keywords: CES; economic; research; micro; data; microdata; chief; economist (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000-06
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2000/CES-WP-00-09.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:00-09

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dawn Anderson ().