Measuring and Projecting U.S. Investment in Semiconductor Manufacturing Capacity

David Byrne, Robert J. Kurtzman and Heidi Williams ()

No 35779, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We consider official and alternative data sources for measuring and projecting the role of U.S. manufacturing in the global semiconductor manufacturing industry. We find that the government sources we consider face significant limitations for tracking semiconductor fab investment in real time: they use industry and product categories that are too broad and come with substantial publication lags. We then analyze project-level alternative data from Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI), which provides quarterly tracking of individual fab projects with greater timeliness and specificity. Comparing SEMI data with official statistics through 2023, we find broad consistency in investment levels, validating SEMI as a credible supplement to official statistics. This work provides both a practical guide for tracking real-time trends in semiconductor manufacturing and a case study in synthesizing government and alternative data sources.

JEL-codes: E0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-09
Note: PR
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w35779.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

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:nbr:nberwo:35779

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w35779
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().