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Timothy Dunne |

Vice President

Timothy Dunne, Vice President

Timothy Dunne is a vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. He leads the Research Department’s Regional Issues Group and specializes in research related to applied industrial economics and labor economics.

Dr. Dunne first joined the Bank in 2006 as a senior economic advisor. He left in 2009 to serve as the Chong K. Liew Professor of Economics at the University of Oklahoma. In 2010, he returned to the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and was appointed to his current position. Before joining the Federal Reserve, Dr. Dunne served as the director of research in the Office of the Chief Economist at the U.S. Bureau of the Census.

Dr. Dunne earned his BA in economics and history from the College of William and Mary and his PhD in economics from Pennsylvania State University.

  • Fed Publications
  • Other Publications
Title Date Publication Author(s) Type

 

 August, 2012 ; Economic Commentary
Abstract: During the Great Recession, the rate at which Americans formed households fell sharply. Though the rate has recently picked up, it isn't fast enough to make up for the shortfall in household formation that occurred over the last several years. An analysis of recent household formation patterns shows that the greatest shortfall occurred among young adults and that it is related to weak economic conditions. Housing choices have shifted as well, with a greater proportion of young households living in rental housing rather than owner-occupied homes.
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 May, 2012 ; Guhan Venkatu; Economic Commentary
Abstract: A region’s economic performance is closely linked to the skills and knowledge of its workforce. Using college attainment as a measure of workforce skills, we examine overall trends in higher education to get a sense of where Ohio stands relative to other states. The data reveal that Ohio has made some progress, especially in improving educational attainment in its younger workers. At the same time, Ohio lags in a number of other dimensions, in particular, in its overall level of college attainment and in attracting educated workers into the state.
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 October, 2011 ; Dionissi Aliprantis; Kyle Fee; Economic Commentary
Abstract: Workers with more education typically earn more than those with less education, and the difference has been growing in recent decades. Not surprisingly, the percentage of the population going after and getting a college degree has been rising as well. Since the late 1970s, though, the increase in college attainment has stalled for men and gathered steam for women. Among college-age individuals, more women now graduate than men. Changes in labor market incentives appear to explain the increased investment in education made by women. But men's investments in education have been much less responsive to the same incentives.
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 January, 2011 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, working paper no. 11-02 ; Dakshina G De Silva; Georgia Kosmopoulou; Carlos Lamarche; Working Papers
Abstract: Programs that encourage the participation of disadvantaged business enterprises (DBE) as subcontractors have been a part of government procurement auctions for over three decades. In this paper, we examine the impact of a program that requires prime contractors to subcontract out a portion of a highway procurement project to DBE firms. We study how DBE subcontracting requirements affect bidding behavior in federally funded projects. Within a symmetric independent private value framework, we use the equilibrium bidding function to obtain the cost distribution of firms undertaking projects either with or without subcontracting goals. We then use nonparametric estimation methodsto uncover and compare the cost of firms bidding on a class of asphalt projects related to surface treatment in Texas. The analysis shows little differences in the cost structure between auctions that have subcontracting goals and those that do not.
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 November, 2009 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Policy Discussion Paper, no. 28 ; Scott Shane; James B Thomson; Policy Discussion Papers
Abstract: This Policy Discussion Paper summarizes papers that were presented at the Workshop on Entrepreneurial Finance, which was held March 12–13, 2009, at the Federal Feserve Bank of Cleveland. Researchers presented new empirical research that exploits data sets on entrepreneurial activity that are based on broad and representative data samples. Papers in the workshop focused primarily on analyses of the sources and structure of start-up finance, including the importance of bank lending, venture capital, angel investors, and owner equity. [NOTE: This issue is available only on-line. It was not printed.]
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 August, 2009 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper no. 0907 ; Shawn D Klimek; Mark J Roberts; Daniel Yi Xu; Working Papers
Abstract: Market structure is determined by the entry and exit decisions of individual producers. These decisions are driven by expectations of future profits which, in turn, depend on the nature of competition within the market. In this paper we estimate a dynamic, structural model of entry and exit in an oligopolistic industry and use it to quantify the determinants of market structure and long-run firm values for two U.S. service industries, dentists and chiropractors. We find that entry costs faced by potential entrants, fixed costs faced by incumbent producers, and the toughness of short-run price competition are all important determinants of long run firm values and market structure. As the number of firms in the market increases, the value of continuing in the market and the value of entering the market both decline, the probability of exit rises, and the probability of entry declines. The magnitude of these effects differ substantially across markets due to differences in exogenous cost and demand factors and across the dentist and chiropractor industries. Simulations using the estimated model for the dentist industry show that pressure from both potential entrants and incumbent ?rms discipline long-run profits. We calculate that a seven percent reduction in the mean sunk entry cost would reduce a monopolist’s long-run profits by the same amount as if the firm operated in a duopoly.
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 July, 2009 ; Guhan Venkatu; Economic Commentary
Abstract: As the foreclosure crisis deepens, increased attention is being paid to foreclosure statistics, which are often used to judge the intensity of foreclosure problems both within and across regions. However, these statistics need to be interpreted carefully; different foreclosure statistics embed different information, and making informative comparisons with various metrics requires understanding how each is constructed.
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 July, 2008 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper no. 0805 ; Xiaoyi Mu; Working Papers
Abstract: This paper investigates the effect of uncertainty on the investment decisions of petroleum refineries in the US. We construct uncertainty measures from commodity futures market and use data on actual capacity changes to measure investment episodes. Capacity changes in US refineries occur infrequently and a small number of investment spikes account for a large fraction of the change in industry capacity. Given the lumpy nature of investment adjustment in this industry, we empirically model the investment process using hazard models. An increase in uncertainty decreases the probability a refinery adjusts its capacity. The results are robust to various investment thresholds. Our findings lend support to theories that emphasize the role of irreversibility in investment decisions.
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 October, 2007 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Working Paper no. 0712 ; Shawn D Klimek; Mark J Roberts; Daniel Yi Xu; Working Papers
Abstract: The relationship between the size of a market and the competitiveness of the market has been of long-standing interest to IO economists. Empirical studies have used the relationship between the size of the geographic market and both the number of firms in the market and the average sales of the firms to draw inferences about the degree of competition in the market. This paper extends this framework to incorporate the analysis of entry and exit flows. A key implication of recent entry and exit models is that current market structure will likely depend upon the history of past participation. The paper explores these issues empirically by examining producer dynamics for two health service industries, dentistry and chiropractic services. We find that the number of potential entrants and past number of incumbent firms are correlated with current market structure. The empirical results also show that as market size increases the number of firms rises less than proportionately, firm size increases, and average productivity increases. However, the magnitude of the correlations are sensitive to the inclusion of the market history variables.
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 August, 2007 Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Economic Commentary ; Economic Commentary
Abstract: Many Fourth District cities have experienced relatively weak population growth over the past half century. One possible reason some cities have recently grown more is because they have better educated workforces. Recent research suggests that the educational attainment of residents is critical to population growth, particularly for cities in the Northeast and Midwest.
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Title Date Publication Author(s) Type
Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Goals in Government Procurement Contracting: An Analysis of Bidding Behavior and Costs

 

 May, 2012 International Journal of Industrial Organization, vol. 30, pp. 377-388 ; Dakshina G De Silva; Georgia Kosmopoulou; Carlos Lamarche; Journal Article
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Review of "Wage Structures, Employment Adjustments and Globalization?"

 

 September, 2011 Journal of Economic Literature, September ; Journal Article
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Investment Spikes and Uncertainty in the Petroleum Refining Industry

 

 July, 2010 Journal of Industrial Economics, vol. 58, pp. 190-213. ; Xiaoyi Mu; Journal Article
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The Dynamics of Market Structure and Market Size in Two Health Service Industries

 

 January, 2009 Producer Dynamics: New Evidence from Micro Data, University of Chicago Press, forthcoming ; Shawn D Klimek; Mark J Roberts; Daniel Yi Xu; Article in Book
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Comments on "Measuring and Analyzing Cross-country Differences in Firm Dynamics"

 

 January, 2009 Producer Dynamics: New Evidence from Micro Data, University of Chicago Press, forthcoming ; Comment
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Investment Spikes and Uncertainty in the Petroleum Refining Industry

 

 January, 2009 Journal of Industrial Economics, forthcoming ; Xiaoyi Mu; Journal Article
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 January, 2008 European Economic Review, Vol. 52, 2008, pp. 150-181. ; Dakshina G De Silva; Anu Kankanamge; Georgia Kosmopoulou; Journal Article
Abstract: A number of papers in the theoretical auction literature show that the release of information regarding the seller’s valuation of an item can cause bidders to bid more aggressively. This widely accepted result in auction theory remains largely untested in the empirical literature. Recent theoretical work has also shown that this effect can be more pronounced in auctions with larger common cost uncertainty. We examine the impact of a policy change by the Oklahoma Department of Transportation that led to the release of the state?s internal estimate of the costs to complete highway construction projects. We perform a differences-in-differences analysis comparing bidding in Texas, a state that had a uniform policy of revealing the same information all throughout the period of analysis, to bidding in Oklahoma. Our results show that, in comparison to Texas auctions, the average bid in Oklahoma fell after the change in engineers? cost estimate (ECE) policy. This decline in bids was even larger for projects where the common uncertainty in costs is greater. Moreover, the within-auction standard deviation of bids fell after the change in ECE policy with the most significant decline observed again in projects with greater common cost uncertainty.
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Technology Adoption and the Skill Mix of US Manufacturing Plants

 

 July, 2005 Scottish Journal of Political Economy, July 2005, v. 52, iss. 3, pp. 387-405 ; Kenneth Troske; Journal Article
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Review of “The Economic Impact of ICT: Measurement, Evidence, and Implications”

 

 June, 2005 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Journal of Economic Literature ; Review
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 January, 2005 International Journal of Industrial Organization, vol. 23, 2005, pp. 399-421 ; Shawn D Klimek; Mark J Roberts; Journal Article
Abstract: Producers entering a market can differ widely in their prior production experience, ranging from none to extensive experience in related geographic or product markets. In this paper, we quantify the nature of prior plant and firm experience for entrants into a market and measure its effect on the subsequent decision to exit the market. Using plant-level data for seven regional manufacturing industries in the U.S., we find that a producer’s experience at the time it enters a market plays an important role in the exit decision, affecting both the overall probability of exit and the method of exit. After controlling for observable plant and market variables that affect profits, there remain systematic differences in exit patterns across three groups of plants distinguished by their prior experience: de novo entrants, experienced plants that enter by diversifying their product mix, and new plants owned by experienced firms. The results indicate that the exit decision cannot be treated as determined solely by current and future plant, firm, and market conditions, but that the plant’s history also plays an important independent role in conditioning the likelihood of survival.
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Wages and Productivity Dispersion in U.S. Manufacturing: The Role of Computer Investment

 

 June, 2004 Journal of Labor Economics, June, 2004, pp. 397-430 ; Lucia Foster; John Haltiwanger; Kenneth Troske; Journal Article
Abstract: By exploiting establishment-level data, this paper sheds new light on the source of the changes in the structure of production, wages, and employment that have occurred over the last several decades. Based on theoretical work by Caselli (1999) and Kremer and Maskin (1996), we focus on investigating the following two related hypotheses. The first hypothesis is that the channel through which skill biased technical change works through the economy is via changes in the dispersion in wages and productivity across establishments. The second is that the increased dispersion in wages and productivity across establishments is linked to differential rates of technological adoption across establishments. Our findings are supportive of these hypotheses. Specifically, we find that (1) the between plant component of wage dispersion is a growing part of total wage dispersion, (2) much of the between plant increase in dispersion is within industries, (3) the between plant measures of wage and productivity dispersion have increased substantially over the last few decades, and (4) a substantial fraction of the rising dispersion in wages and productivity is accounted for by increasing wage and productivity differentials across high and low computer investment per worker plants and high and low capital intensity plants.
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An Empirical Analysis of Entrant and Incumbent Bidding in Road Construction Auctions

 

 January, 2003 Journal of Industrial Economics, vol. 51, 2003, pp. 295-316 ; Dakshina G De Silva; Georgia Kosmopoulou; Journal Article
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Sequential Bidding in Auctions of Construction Contracts

 

 January, 2002 Economic Letters, vol. 76, 2002, pp. 239-244 ; Dakshina G De Silva; Georgia Kosmopoulou; Journal Article
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Gross Employment Flows in Coal Mining

 

 January, 2001 Economic Letters, vol. 71, 2001, pp. 217-224 ; David Merrell; Journal Article
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A Comparison of Employment Flows in the Canadian and U.S. Manufacturing Sectors

 

 January, 1998 The Review of Economics and Statistics, August, 1998, pp. 523-542 ; John Baldwin; John Haltiwanger; Journal Article
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Capital Adjustment Patterns in Manufacturing Plants

 

 January, 1998 The Review of Economic Dynamics, vol. 1, 1998, pp. 409-429 ; Mark Doms; Journal Article
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Technology and Jobs: Secular Changes and Cyclical Dynamics

 

 January, 1997 Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, 1997, pp. 107-178 ; John Haltiwanger; Kenneth Troske; Journal Article
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Workers, Wages, and Technology

 

 January, 1997 Quarterly Journal of Economics, February, 1997, pp. 253-290 ; Mark Doms; Kenneth Troske; Journal Article
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Wages, Employment Structure, and Employer Size-Wage Premia: Their Relationship to Advanced-technology Usage at U.S. Manufacturing Establishments

 

 March, 1995 Economica, March, 1995, pp. 89-107 ; James Schmitz; Journal Article
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Job Change in the Manufacturing Sectors of Canada and the United States

 

 January, 1995 The Dynamics of Industrial Competition, J.Baldwin, Cambridge University Press, pp 119-52 ; John Baldwin; John Haltiwanger; Article in Book
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Energy Intensity, Electricity Consumption, and Advanced Manufacturing Technology Usage

 

 January, 1995 Technological Forecasting and Social Change, October, 1995 ; Mark Doms; Journal Article
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Plant Age and Technology Usage in U.S. Manufacturing Industries

 

 October, 1994 Rand Journal of Economics, vol. 25. No. 3, Fall, 1994, pp. 488-499 ; Journal Article
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Unionism and Gross Employment Flows

 

 January, 1994 Southern Economic Journal, January, 1994, pp. 727-738 ; David A Macpherson; Journal Article
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Costs, Demand, and Imperfect Competition as Determinants of Plant-Level Output Prices

 

 January, 1992 Empirical Studies in Industrial Organization: Essays in Honor of Leonard W. Weiss, Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 13-34 ; Mark J Roberts; Article in Book
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The Duration of Employment Opportunities in U.S. Manufacturing

 

 May, 1991 The Review of Economics and Statistics, May, 1991, pp. 216-227 ; Mark J Roberts; Journal Article
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A Note on Ownership and Performance in Manufacturing Firms

 

 April, 1991 Southern Economic Journal, April, 1991, pp. 1164-1169 ; David A Macpherson; Journal Article
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Variation in Producer Turnover across U.S. Manufacturing Industries

 

 January, 1991 Entry and Market Contestability: An International Comparison, Basil Blackwell, pp. 187-203 ; Mark J Roberts; Article in Book
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The Growth and Failure of U.S. Manufacturing Plants

 

 November, 1989 Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 1989, pp. 671-698. Reprinted in Small Firms and Economic Growth, 1997, and in Innovation, Evolution of Industry and Economic Growth, 2000 ; Mark J Roberts; Larry Samuelson; Journal Article
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Firm Entry and Post-Entry Performance in U.S. Chemical Industries

 

 October, 1989 Journal of Law and Economics, October 1989, pp 233-271 ; Mark J Roberts; Larry Samuelson; Journal Article
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Plant Turnover and Gross Employment Flows in the U.S. Manufacturing Sector

 

 January, 1989 Journal of Labor Economics, January 1989, pp. 48-71 ; Mark J Roberts; Larry Samuelson; Journal Article
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The Patterns of Firm Entry and Exit in the U.S. Manufacturing Sector, 1963-1982

 

 December, 1988 he Rand Journal of Economics, Winter, 1988, pp. 495-515. Reprinted in Small Firms and Economic Growth, 1997 ; Mark J Roberts; Larry Samuelson; Journal Article
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The Role of Technology Use in the Survival and Growth of Manufacturing Plants

 

 International Journal of Industrial Organization, December, 1995. Reprinted in Innovation, Evolution of Industry and Economic Growth, Audretsch and Klepperer (eds), The International Library of Critical Writings in Economics, Series Editor: Mark Blaug, 20 ; Mark Doms; Mark J Roberts; Journal Article
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