The Foundations for Evidence-Based Policy Making Act of 2018 requires agencies to make agency data public when possible and to develop statistical evidence to support policymaking. The Department of Commerce's evaluation policy is that evaluations must be transparent. Evaluation design and findings should be made public to the greatest extent possible and should only be withheld for legal, ethical, or national security concerns. Findings should provide enough detail so that others can review, interpret, or replicate/reproduce the work. 

Learn more about Evaluation at the Department of Commerce.

Evidence and Evaluations

Overseas Visitor Impact on State Economies | 2024
For the first time since 1997, the National Travel and Tourism Office has estimated the economic impact of overseas visitors for U.S. states and territories. These new estimates include overseas visitors’ spending on travel goods and services in each U.S. state and territory as well as the local employment supported by this spending. These new statistics provide deeper insight into the significance of international tourism on state and local economies.

An Aquaculture Opportunity Area Atlas for the Gulf of Alaska
This Alaska Atlas includes technical information that may be used to assist agency decision-makers in identifying potential Aquaculture Opportunity Areas (AOAs) as required by Executive Order (E.O.) 13921, Promoting American Seafood Competitiveness and Economic Growth (May 7, 2020), and to advance the goals laid out in E.O. 14276, Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness (April 17, 2025).

Measuring Artificial Intelligence Use by Businesses
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to radically transform our economy; however, it is not clear how this technology will diffuse across businesses, what complementary investments are required for adoption, nor how employment and productivity at adopting (and non-adopting) businesses will be impacted. As part of the U.S. Census Bureau’s mission “to serve as the nation’s leading provider of quality data about its people and economy,” it is critical that we provide accurate and timely measures of this process. This chapter outlines the Center for Economic Studies’ (CES) efforts to measure business use of AI through Census Bureau surveys, administrative data, and private data. It synthesizes roughly a dozen research papers detailing the development of these measures, the challenges faced, and lessons learned about the diffusion and impacts of AI. In doing so, this chapter also documents how Census Bureau research and development activities interact with production activities to improve economic measurement. In service to this dual focus on the results and the process used to get these results, this chapter is organized by measurement methodology (process), with a section near the end pulling together common themes (results)

Understanding Disasters Through Federal Data: The People and Places Affected by Hurricane Helene
This work establishes a baseline for future measurement of Hurricane Helene’s impact with a new dataset, the Census Bureau’s Assessment, Recovery, and Evaluation Datasets, or CAREs. CAREs is a curation of data from multiple federal sources, including the Census Bureau, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Department of Energy (DOE), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This allows data users to find relevant information about the population, disaster exposure, and recovery, all in one source.

Manufacturing USA Advanced Manufacturing Occupation and Competency Framework
This competency framework was developed in direct response to the 2023 report Revitalizing America’s Manufacturing Workforce: A Manufacturing USA National Roadmap, which identifies ways for the Manufacturing USA network to work together to develop and scale learning and development opportunities to equip the current, emerging, and future workforce with advanced manufacturing skills.

The Opportunity Project: 10 Years of Open Data and Agile Development
This paper continues to explore the value of agile practices and open data within government through the lens of The Opportunity Project (TOP), with a specific focus on the TOP program’s impacts on government and nongovernment participants. Through a series of interviews with the TOP team and TOP participants, as well as a review of various products produced or iterated during TOP sprints, the Center for Open Data Enterprise has developed four case studies exploring a different way that TOP has made an impact over the past decade. Those case studies demonstrate both the value of TOP and the ways that TOP’s processes have been effective.

NOAA Fire Weather Testbed Launches First In-Person Evaluation 
Wildland fire presents complex, time-sensitive, and uncertain decision spaces wherein fire and emergency management agencies use various fire-weather–related information sources to assess their interplay with other aspects of the fire environment, all while considering local context, response capacity, and identified risks to life and property. The National Weather Service (NWS) and other purveyors of fire-weather–related information support emergency and land-management partners by providing observations, models, tools, and workflows that enhance impact-based decision support services (IDSS) before, during, and after wildland fires. To support innovation and address growing needs in the fire weather space, an operations-to-research-to-operations testbed focused on wildland fire weather from physical and social science perspectives is crucial to address the challenges of the fire environment (weather, fuels, and topography) and to protect critical assets. The Fire Weather Testbed provides opportunities for both coordinated and disparate groups with the shared mission of fire management to collaboratively assess emergent fire weather–related products and services.

Measuring Effectiveness and the Evidence Act
In adhering to the Foundations for the Evidence-based Policymaking Act of 2018, BIS has developed an evaluative framework to assess and measure the effectiveness and projected impact of U.S. export controls, while formalizing the process of evidence collection and analysis, to advance U.S. national security, foreign policy, and economic objectives. This repeatable framework will enable BIS to address existing gaps and enhance the overall effectiveness of export controls.

Receiver Interference Immunity: Issues and Recommendations
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) commissioned The MITRE Corporation (MITRE) to study radio-frequency (RF) receiver interference immunity performance (“receiver performance”) and prepare this report. Based on extensive research, internal expertise, and consultations with subject matter experts from government and industry, the report presents two key findings and makes two recommendations.

The Artificial Intelligence Patent Dataset (AIPD) 2023 Update (Dataset)
The 2023 update to the Artificial Intelligence Patent Dataset (AIPD) extends the original AIPD to all United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patent documents (i.e., patents and pre-grant publications, or PGPubs) published through 2023, while incorporating an improved patent landscaping methodology to identify AI within patents and PGPubs. This new approach substitutes BERT for Patents for the Word2Vec embeddings used previously, and uses active learning to incorporate additional training data closer to the “decision boundary” between AI and not AI to help improve predictions. We show that this new approach achieves substantially better performance than the original methodology on a set of patent documents where the two methods disagreed— on this set, the AIPD 2023 achieved precision of 68.18 percent and recall of 78.95 percent, while the original AIPD achieved 50 percent and 21.05 percent, respectively. To help researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers better understand the determinants and impacts of AI invention, we have made the AIPD 2023 publicly available on the USPTO’s economic research web page.

The Economic Benefits of the Geostationary Extended Observations (GeoXO) Satellite’s Ocean Color Instrument: An Examination of the Harmful Algal Bloom Impact Mitigation Value Chain
The main purpose of the study was to determine the potential economic benefits of the OCX sensor as government appropriators and decision-makers perform due diligence in assessing the lifecycle and development costs of the instrument.

The Effect of Application Fees on Entry into Patenting
Ensuring broad access to the patent system is crucial for fostering innovation and promoting economic growth. To support this goal, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office offers reduced fees for small and micro entities. This paper investigates whether fee rates affect the filing of applications by small and micro entities. Exploiting recent fee reforms, the study evaluates the relationship between fee changes and the number of new entrants, controlling for potential confounding factors such as legislative changes. The findings suggest that fee reductions alone are insufficient to significantly increase participation in the patent system among small and micro entities.

Privatizing the space economy: A perspective on U.S. government and private-sector participation based on patents
This report makes three contributions to a technology-based understanding of the space economy. First, we develop a comprehensive taxonomy of space-related technologies for identifying inventions relevant to the space economy. The taxonomy has nine component areas: satellite communications; position, navigation and timing; earth observation; space transportation; human space habitation; space science; space manufacturing and resource development; space operations and logistics; and general space technologies. Working with United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) examiners, who are experts in their respective areas, we operationalize the taxonomy by developing a set of detailed queries that use technology classifications and keywords. Second, we analyze the collected patent documents to reveal the volume and growth in U.S. patent applications that disclose space inventions. Finally, we complement this overall analysis by using information within the patent documents to provide a perspective on U.S. federal and private-sector participation in U.S. space patenting between 1976 and 2023.

Innovative Travel, Tourism, and Outdoor Recreation Awards 
With a lens towards outdoor recreation, this report profiles six case studies of innovative projects that received awards under the American Rescue Plan’s (ARP) Travel, Tourism and Outdoor Recreation (TTOR) program administered by the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA).

Foreign Direct Investment in the United States
According to the most recent data, the United States is the top destination of foreign direct investment (FDI) globally. Through acquisitions, opening establishments, or expansion of existing ones, foreign firms invested a total of $177 billion in the United States in 2022. With its workforce, legal protections and encouragement of innovation, the United States continues to be an attractive destination for business investment. Leveraging data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), this Department of Commerce, Office of the Under Secretary for Economic Affairs (OUSEA) report covers aggregate FDI trends into the United States and provides analysis by industry, country, and geography.

Investing in America: The Estimated Socioeconomic Impacts and Ecosystem Services Benefits of NOAA Coastal Management and Habitat Restoration Investments
This evaluation covers eight coastal management and conservation funding opportunities in NOAA’s National Ocean Service and National Marine Fisheries Service, released and awarded in 2022 and 2023, which represent 173 awards and $717 million in federal funding. The report demonstrates the economic, social, and ecosystem services benefits NOAA grant-funded investments are expected to generate across coastal and Great Lakes states, as well as U.S. Territories. Given these awards were generally in the early stage of implementation when the analyses were conducted, NOAA selected evaluation methods (detailed in the appendices) that enabled the agency to model or estimate anticipated benefits before project completion using information available from the grant-award documents.

Revisions to Gross Domestic Product, Gross Domestic Income, and Their Major Components
The study examines the revisions, also called updates, to GDP, GDI, and their components for 1999 to 2022 and thus covers BEA estimates during the COVID–19 crisis, when measuring the sudden abrupt stop of economic activity and its slow and patchy recovery, both in its geographical and sectoral variation, became extremely difficult and added much more volatility to BEA estimates and thus revisions, than in previous periods. This variation is especially noticeable in all the statistics aiming to measure federal nondefense expenditures in 2020 and 2021, where the variation was the greatest, as the federal government stepped in to ameliorate the human, social, and economic costs of the crisis.

2023 Federal Broadband Funding Report
The ACCESS BROADBAND Act 2021 charged NTIA’s Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth with capturing data on federal broadband investments, including the number of United States residents receiving broadband services from Universal Service Fund programs or federal broadband support programs and reporting on the local economic impact of broadband investments, including any impact on small businesses or jobs.

Local Impacts of Economic Development Administration Construction Investments
This evaluation estimates the impacts of EDA construction projects on businesses, jobs, and incomes. We use panel data to create a more rigorous quasi-experimental method than those used in previous studies that accounts for trends over time. We estimate the impacts of grants for EDA construction projects awarded from 2010 onward on establishments (for-profit firms and nonprofit organizations), jobs, and incomes of nearby residents at both the census tract and county levels. Our impact estimates compare establishments, jobs, and incomes three to eight years after a grant award to their same levels three-plus years before the grant award. We also add several data sources to strengthen our understanding of EDA’s impacts on local areas.

Untapped Potential: Investigating Gender Disparities in Patent Citations
Innovation is often a cumulative process that relies heavily on prior research. A primary way to measure knowledge flows in the context of invention is by using patent citations. In this paper, we examine the relationship between the gender composition of inventor teams and the likelihood that patent applicants will cite a patent on subsequent patents. We see that majority-female inventor teams receive 4-22% fewer citations than patents by majority-male inventor teams. We explore the potential drivers of this gap and find that citations to patents granted to the majority of female teams are more likely to be omitted from a patent's citations than those patents with similar content granted to the majority of male teams. We identify that this gap is primarily driven by applicant-added citations rather than those added by patent examiners. The gap appears to be exacerbated by gender-based team homophily; that is, patents by majority male teams are more likely to cite other patents granted to majority male teams. Second, we find evidence that patents by the majority of female teams are less likely to be further developed and, consequently, are cited less frequently compared to patents granted to the majority of male inventor teams. We interpret this finding as suggestive evidence that the gender composition of inventor teams can affect follow-on patenting and thus can have broader implications on the innovation landscape. This work has implications for our understanding of the relationship between gender and the drivers of innovation and the limitations of citations as a measure of patent impact.

The Gender Pay Gap and Its Determinants Across the Human Capital Distribution
This paper links American Community Survey data and postsecondary transcript records to examine how the gender pay gap varies across the distribution of education credentials for a sample of 2003-2013 graduates. Although recent literature emphasizes gender inequality among the most educated, we find a smaller gender pay gap at higher education levels. Field-of-degree and occupation effects explain most of the gap among top bachelor’s graduates, while work hours and unobserved channels matter more for less-competitive bachelor’s, associate, and certificate graduates. We develop a novel decomposition of the child penalty to examine the role of children in explaining these results.

An Overview of GHG Monitoring: Objectives and Technologies
This background paper explores the potential for APEC economies to implement innovative technologies to aid the measurement of atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the associated protocols for their adoption. It provides an overview of the current suite of atmospheric measurement systems and devices, emerging technologies in the field, and key examples of what APEC economies currently use to measure atmospheric GHG emissions. Additionally, this paper dives into the importance of aligning technologies with regulatory frameworks of emissions inventories to support the adoption and integration of effective measurement and monitoring practices.

After the Storm: How Emergency Liquidity Helps Small Businesses Following Natural Disasters
Does emergency credit prevent long-term financial distress? We study the causal effects of government-provided recovery loans to small businesses following natural disasters. The rapid financial injection might enable viable firms to survive and grow or hobble precarious firms with more risk and interest obligations. We show that the loans reduce exit and bankruptcy, increase employment and revenue, unlock private credit, and reduce delinquency. These effects, especially the crowding-in of private credit, appear to reflect resolving uncertainty about repair. We do not find capital reallocation away from neighboring firms and see some evidence of positive spillovers on local entry.

The National-Level Economic Impact of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP): Estimates for Fiscal Year 2023
The Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP), part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, contracted with Summit Consulting and the Upjohn Institute to analyze the overall effect of MEP projects on the U.S. economy in fiscal year 2023 (FY 2023). MEP Centers deliver technical assistance to primarily small and medium-sized manufacturing establishments to help them improve their productivity and competitiveness. The Centers assist with product development, new investments, and improved products and processes. They also provide tools and resources for business expansion and business continuity planning that contribute to improved sales and cost savings. These enhancements increase client establishments' productivity, profitability, and competitiveness, thus improving the economy by creating jobs, increasing earnings, and expanding the tax base.

Group Quarters Advance Contact – Refining Classification of College or University Student Housing in Debriefings with University Student Housing Administrators
The purpose of this evaluation is to assess the performance of the student housing screening question used in Group Quarters Advance Contact and identify potential changes to the screening definition and to the group quarters-type definitions on which it is based.

Investigating Digital Advertising and Online Self-Response
This study's purpose is to evaluate the role of digital advertising in directing respondents to complete the census online.

The Economic Impact of Developing the FirstNet Band 14 Radio Access Network (RAN) Executive Summary
In this report, we examine the estimated impact of AT&T’s development of the FirstNet RAN between 2017 and 2023 on jobs, wages, and salaries, and the net economic output across industries. We estimated the economic impact using the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis’s (BEA) Regional Input–Output Modeling System (RIMS II). Our estimates account for the direct, indirect, and induced effects of FirstNet RAN development, yielding a comprehensive picture of its economic impact on the American economy.

Matching 2018 Census Barriers, Attitudes, and Behaviors Study (CBAMS) Survey Sample to 2020 Census Report
By matching the 2018 CBAMS survey sample addresses to 2020 Census addresses, this study evaluated (1) the relationship between intended response to the 2020 Census and actual response behaviors; (2) the comparison of mode preference in 2018 CBAMS and response mode used in the 2020 Census; (3) the comparison of 2020 Census self-response rates by individual characteristics from the 2018 CBAMS and household characteristics from the 2020 Census to get a sense of how movers and respondent mismatches affect the analysis; and (4) an exploratory model to examine the relationship between self-reported intent to participate in the 2020 Census as stated in 2018 CBAMS and actual 2020 Census participation while controlling for 2018 CBAMS characteristics.

An Analysis of Uncrewed System Use within NOAA: Navigating the Future 
As technology evolves, uncrewed systems (UxS) continue to demonstrate high potential to advance scientific research and environmental monitoring. The Uncrewed Systems Research Transition Office (UxSRTO) in NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research and the Uncrewed Systems Operations Center (UxSOC) in NOAA’s Office of Marine and Aviation Operations set out to identify opportunities for UxS growth to further meet NOAA’s mission needs through a request for information, which was distributed across NOAA as a questionnaire. The results of the questionnaire showed that NOAA uses UxS to engage in a wide array of activities both within and across diverse mission areas. UxS were characterized as safer, faster, more efficient, more environmentally friendly, and less expensive than non-UxS collection efforts. This evaluation identified challenges to UxS use and offered concrete recommendations to help alleviate those challenges.

An Assessment of the Divisions of the Physical Measurement Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology Located in Boulder, Colorado: Fiscal Year 2023
Since 1959, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has annually commissioned the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to assess its various measurements and standards laboratories. This report appraises the Physical Measurement Laboratory (PML), assessing four divisions of PML situated at the  NIST Boulder campus: the Applied Physics Division, the Time and Frequency Division, the Quantum Electromagnetics Division, and the Quantum Physics Division. The report compares the caliber of research at PML with similar international programs to determine whether programs adequately align with its objectives; assesses the range of scientific and technical expertise available within PML; considers the budget, facilities, equipment, and Human Resources to bolster PML technical endeavors and contribute to the fulfillment of its goals; and assesses the efficacy of PML methods for disseminating the products of its work.

Is the Gender Pay Gap Largest at the Top?
No: it is at least as large at the bottom percentiles of the earnings distribution. Conditional quantile regressions reveal that while the gap at the top percentiles is largest among the most educated, the gap at the bottom percentiles is largest among the least educated. Gender differences in labor supply create more pay inequality among the least educated than the most educated. The pay gap has declined throughout the distribution since 2006, but it declined more for the most-educated women. Current economics-of-gender research focuses heavily on the top end; equal emphasis should be placed on mechanisms driving gender inequality for non-college-educated workers.

Performance Evaluation of the Central Asia Regional (CAR) Program
This evaluation is a performance evaluation of the Commercial Law Development Program (CLDP) CAR activities, where the focus of the examination is on implementation, inputs, outputs, and likely expected outcomes. Importantly, this performance evaluation was designed to address CLDP CAR activities for the previous two years only (roughly April 2021 through May 2023). Furthermore, the evaluation focused only on the five supported regional expert working groups and the Vis Moot alternative dispute resolution activity.

Technical Document Accompanying the Distribution of Personal Income by State: Prototype Statistics
In response to growing interest in how income is distributed across households, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has been researching methods to construct statistics on income distribution that adhere to national economic accounting principles. On October 24, 2023, BEA published prototype statistics on state distribution of personal income. These statistics provide income information that accrues to individuals within certain income groups, as well as ratios and Gini coefficients that provide a fuller picture of state economies.

2022 Federal Broadband Funding Report: Investing in Internet for All
The 2022 Federal Broadband Funding Report summarizes and analyzes FY21 data collected across the federal government. Broadband funding under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was appropriated in FY22 and will be included in the 2023 Report. Due to the data collection timeline, Federal Broadband Funding Reports currently report on the previous fiscal year rather than the fiscal year in which they are released. To accompany this report, NTIA developed a consolidated data dashboard to assist in analyzing and reporting for FY21 federal broadband investments. 

Real-Time 2020 Administrative Record Census Simulation
This experiment combined 31 types of administrative records and third-party sources to produce 2020 population estimates with the same reference date, April 1, 2020, and within the same timeframe as the 2020 Census of Population and Housing. The sources and methodology are designed to improve coverage of historically undercounted population groups. The report identifies several improvements critical to developing the Census Bureau’s administrative record infrastructure to facilitate higher-quality administrative record-based population estimates, especially regarding locational accuracy.

The National-Level Economic Impact of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP): Estimates for Fiscal Year 2022
The study’s purpose is to use client-reported outcomes to estimate the overall effect of NIST MEP on the U.S. economy. Using a model developed by Regional Economic Models, Inc. (REMI), the study estimates the indirect and induced effects of MEP clients' reported increases in jobs, sales, cost savings, and investments.

Comparing 2019 Census Test and 2020 Census Self-Response Rates to Estimate Decennial Environment
The 2020 Census was accompanied by a diverse array of paid advertisements, partnership outreach programs, news coverage, and more designed to increase knowledge about the census and motivate households to self-respond, specifically through the internet mode. This evaluation estimates these programs' effects, collectively called the decennial environment. By matching the 2019 Census Test data to the 2020 Census data, we compared self-response rates between the 2020 Census and the 2019 Census Test, void of advertisements. 

Closing the Gender Gap in Patenting: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial at the USPTO
Women are underrepresented in patenting, and the gap is not closing quickly. One major roadblock to progress is a dearth of causal evidence on the potential effectiveness of policies to reduce the gender gap in patenting. Analyzing a randomized control trial at the United States Patent and Trademark Office that was designed to provide additional help to applicants who do not have legal representation, we find heterogeneous causal impacts across gender and technologies on the probability of obtaining patent rights. While both male and female applicants benefited, the probability of obtaining a patent was about 11 percentage points greater for women, and the effects were largest for U.S. inventors, new U.S. inventors, and in technology areas where women had the worst relative outcomes. Our results suggest that a portion of the gender gap in patenting could be eliminated through additional assistance during patent examination.

The Future of Place-Based Economic Policy: Early Insights from the Build Back Better Regional Challenge
As the nation seeks to rebuild in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, federal policymakers increasingly recognize that supporting bottom-up solutions is a critical path for spurring economic recovery, mitigating climate change, establishing supply chains in critical technologies, and addressing geographic inequities. This is the central premise of place-based economic policies like the $1 billion Build Back Better Regional Challenge (BBBRC)—a challenge grant administered by the Economic Development Administration (EDA) in the U.S. Department of Commerce. As the EDA’s signature American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) recovery program, the BBBRC provides five-year grants ranging from $25 million to $65 million across 21 competitively selected regions. These investments will support the local development of nationally critical industries and technologies in ways that deliver economic opportunity to traditionally underserved people and communities.

Where are U.S. Women Patentees? Assessing Three Decades of Growth
This report maps women’s participation as inventor-patentees across U.S. counties from 1990 through 2019. It identifies counties with the most women patentees by technology field and assesses three decades of growth. Recognizing that increasing the number of women who patent is an important policy objective, the analysis explores characteristics of county economic environments correlated with having and increasing the number of women inventor-patentees. The results presented clarify the landscape and lay the foundation for evidence-based approaches to important questions, such as how women’s participation impacts county-level economic performance.

Geostationary Extended Observations Benefit Analysis
This report describes many of the societal benefits that are expected to be generated through the use of observations from NOAA’s future Geostationary Extended Observations (GeoXO) satellite constellation and the manner in which those benefits are produced. The report focuses on areas of substantial benefit or novel and interesting applications. The report also provides estimates of the magnitude of a subset of the anticipated societal benefits for comparison with the anticipated cost of the constellation during its development and throughout its operational life. This information has been developed for use by the GeoXO team and the Department of Commerce in future budget discussions and in a manner that is consistent with guidance from the Office of Management and Budget.

The Probability of Winning Federal Contracts: An Analysis of Small Minority-Owned Firms 
This study reviews data on federal government contracting and assesses the relationship between contracting outcomes for small businesses and their type of ownership. The study is limited in scope and evaluates the probability of certain classifiable businesses’ attainment of federal contracts in a specific period, including minority-owned businesses and small disadvantaged businesses (including businesses participating in the Small Business Administration’s Section 8(a) business development program).

Developing Statistics on the Distribution of State Personal Income: Methodology and Preliminary Results
In recent years, a growing interest in income inequality has fueled demand for information on how the nation’s prosperity and growth are shared across households as a complement to published data on total income and output. This paper details the methodology and presents preliminary measures of the distribution of income at the regional level. These are based on personal income, a primary economic indicator published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and measure how personal income is distributed across households in each state and the District of Columbia. The methodology allocates detailed components of state personal income to households based on household data from the Current Population Survey supplemented with other sources. The household-level data are then aggregated to generate state-level bottom-up inequality statistics, including Gini coefficients, medians, and quintile shares of state personal income. The results show that many inequality trends are similar across measures.

Estimating the United States Space Economy Using Input-Output Frameworks (View the latest data)
This paper examines two first-of-their-kind economic datasets about the United States (US) space sector that use input-output (I-O) frameworks at their foundation. We explain what these data tell us about the impact on the US economy stemming from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) spending and the production of space-related goods and services. Overall, the data show that NASA’s total economic output in 2019 was $64.3 billion and supported over 312,000 jobs. Additionally, space-related production was found to represent 0.5 percent of US gross domestic product in 2018. We describe the advantages of using I-O-based data like these over revenue-based economic reports that are commonly used in the space policy arena and that suffer from important measurement issues.

NTIA ACCESS BROADBAND 2021 Report
The ACCESS BROADBAND Act, enacted as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, mandated that NTIA produce an annual report to Congress. The report highlights the accomplishments of NTIA’s Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth (OICG) over the past year, covers investments in federal broadband support programs and Universal Service Fund (USF) programs, and provides recommendations to improve efforts to track broadband spending and outcomes.

Defining and Measuring the U.S. Marine Economy (View the latest data)
The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has developed prototype statistics to measure the ocean’s contribution to U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). Economic activity associated with the ocean exists within BEA’s national accounts but is not clearly visible within the standard national accounts structure. These new estimates were extracted from the national accounts supply-use framework and arranged to give a distinct view of U.S. ocean-related production. These prototype statistics provide an opportunity for outside groups to give feedback on the methodology used to develop these results, and they are the first step in building a comprehensive measure of the ocean’s role in the overall U.S. economy in the form of an Ocean Economy Satellite Account (OESA).

Evaluation of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s CLDP and SABIT Program in Europe, Eurasia, and Central Asia: Evaluation Report for Central Asia (Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan)
The U.S. Department of State has commissioned the evaluation of the Commercial Law Development Program (CLDP) and the Special American Business Internship Training (SABIT) Program to assess the performance and effectiveness of the programs’ results from 2007 to 2017. This assessment also more narrowly considers 2018 and 2019 regarding their use of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) practices in six targeted countries: Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, Tajikistan, and Ukraine. This report evaluates CLDP and SABIT interventions in the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan.

Evaluating the Long-Term Effect of NIST MEP Services on Establishment Performance
This work examines the effects of receipt of business assistance services from the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) on manufacturing establishment performance. Several measures of performance are considered: (1) change in value-added per employee (a measure of productivity); (2) change in sales per worker; (3) change in employment; and (4) establishment survival. To analyze these relationships, we merged program records from the MEP’s client and project information files with administrative records from the Census of Manufacturers and other Census databases over the periods 1997–2002 and 2002–2007 to compare the outcomes and performance of “served” and “unserved” manufacturing establishments. The approach builds on, updates, and expands upon earlier studies comparing matched MEP client and non-client performance over time periods ending in 1992 and 2002. Our results generally indicate that MEP services had positive and significant impacts on establishment productivity and sales per worker for the 2002–2007 period, with some exceptions based on employment size, industry, and type of service provided. MEP services also increased the probability of establishment survival for the 1997–2007 period. Regardless of econometric model specification, MEP clients with 1–19 employees have statistically significant and higher levels of labor productivity growth. We also observed significant productivity differences associated with MEP services by broad sector, with higher impacts over the 2002–2007 time period in the durable goods manufacturing sector. The study further finds that establishments receiving MEP assistance are more likely to survive than those that do not receive MEP assistance. Detailed findings of the study, as well as caveats and limitations, are discussed in the paper.

Evaluating the Impact of MEP Services on Establishment Performance: A Preliminary Empirical Investigation
This work examines the impact of manufacturing extension services on establishment productivity. It builds on an earlier study conducted by Jarmin in the 1990s, by matching the Census of Manufacturers (CMF) with the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) customer and activity datasets to generate treatment and comparison groups for analysis. The scope of the study is the period 1997 to 2002, which was a period of economic downturn in the manufacturing sector and budgetary challenges for the MEP. The paper presents some preliminary findings from this analysis. Both lagged dependent variable (LDV) and difference-in-differences (DiD) models are employed to estimate the relationship between manufacturing extension and labor productivity. The results presented are inconclusive and paint a mixed picture, demonstrating the benefits and limitations of using Census microdata in program evaluation. They also point to the need to conduct analyses that could help to better understand the dynamic impact of MEP services.

Economic Evaluation of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program
This study estimates the net social value of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program. It focuses specifically on a survey population of 273 applicants for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award since 2006.

Measuring the Impact of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership
In this paper, I measure the impact of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) on productivity and sales growth at manufacturing plants. To do this, I match MEP client data to the Census Bureau’s Longitudinal Research Database (LRD). The LRD contains data for all manufacturing establishments in the U.S. and provides a number of measures of plant performance and characteristics, measured consistently across plants and over time. This facilitates valid comparisons between both client and non-client plants and among clients served by different MEP centers. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) administers the MEP as part of its effort to improve the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing. The program provides business and technical assistance to small and medium-sized manufacturers, much as agricultural extension does for farmers. The goal of the paper is to see if measures of plant performance (e.g., productivity and sales growth) are systematically related to participation in the MEP, while controlling for other factors that are known or thought to influence performance. Selection bias is often a problem in evaluation studies, so I specify an econometric model that controls for selection. I estimate the model with data from 8 manufacturing extension centers in 2 states. The control group includes all plants from each state in the LRD. Preliminary results indicate that MEP participation is systematically related to productivity growth but not to sales growth.

Using Matched Client And Census Data To Evaluate The Performance Of The Manufacturing Extension Partnership
This paper proposes a framework for evaluating the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP). The MEP is administered by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as part of its effort to improve the global competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing industries. As the name implies, the MEP is modeled after agricultural extension. Rather than farmers, the MEP's target population is small and medium-sized manufacturers, generally those with less than 500 employees. The MEP currently supports 44 manufacturing extension centers around the country. These centers provide technical and business assistance for manufacturers, much as county extension agents do for farmers. The goal of evaluation is to see if MEP engagements lead to positive outcomes from the view of important MEP stakeholders (e.g., MEP clients, MEP centers, NIST, state and local governments, and Congress). These outcomes are discussed in McGuckin and Redman (1995) and include: Process Outcomes (e.g., adoption of a new technology by a client); Intermediate Outcomes (e.g., reduction in the client's defect rate); Business Outcomes (e.g., survival and profits), and Policy Outcomes (increases in employment, wages, and/or exports). The evaluation framework described in this paper has two components. The first component is an evaluation dataset that contains measures of many of the program outcomes listed above for both MEP clients and a representative control group of non-clients. This dataset will be constructed by linking MEP client records with plant-level Census data housed at the Center for Economic Studies of the Census Bureau. The Census data provides measures of several outcome and control variables that are comparable across both plants and time. The Census data include observations for all manufacturing plants in the U.S. from which representative control groups can be constructed. The MEP client records provide data on the type and intensity of extension engagements. Linking these rich sources of information yields a comprehensive and powerful dataset for MEP evaluation. The second component is an evaluation methodology that exploits this rich dataset to make statistical inferences about the impact of MEP services while carefully controlling for other influences. By using this methodology, we can address many of the shortcomings that plagued previous attempts to evaluate extension services. In addition to evaluation, the dataset described in this paper may be used to profile the characteristics of MEP clients and compare them to non-clients. The Census data contain the complete universe of manufacturing establishments in the U.S.