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.

Evaluation Reports 

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.

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.

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.

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 to 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 noncollege-educated workers.

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 they are released in. To accompany this report, NTIA developed a consolidated data dashboard to assist in analyzing and reporting for FY21 federal broadband investments. The full dashboard with comprehensive filters and data extract capabilities is below; links to the report data in Infogram®, a data visualization and infographics platform.

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 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. Ocean 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 ac[1]counts 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 pro[1]totype 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.

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.