"A firm's production activities are often supported by non-production activities. Among these activities are administrative units including headquarters, which process information both within and between firms. Often firms physically separate such administrative units from their production...

"Using plant-level data from the Plant Capacity Utilization (PCU) Survey, we examine how a manufacturing plant's use of temporary workers is associated with the nature of its output fluctuations. Our empirical evidence suggests that plants choose temps over perms when they expect output to fall,...

"We examine supplier switching decisions using a unique database that tracks firms (credit unions) and their suppliers (data processing vendors); the data are in a panel, allowing us to track supplier switching decisions at a new level of detail. We focus on two sets of relationships. First, we...