Economics of the Automotive Industry

Fulton, G.A., Grimes, D.R., Schmidt, L.G., McAlinden, S.P., Richardson, B.C. 2001. Contribution of the Automotive Industry to the U.S. Economy in 1998: The Nation and its Fifty States.
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The automotive industry is the largest manufacturing industry in the United States. No other single industry is linked to as much of U.S. manufacturing or generates as much retail business and employment. Our study describes the economic and social contributions of the automotive industry to the U.S. economy and to the economies of the fifty states and the District of Columbia. The automotive industry in this study includes companies that make, sell, or service (under warranty) new passenger cars and light-duty trucks in the United States.1 Our study is divided into three parts. In the first part of the study, researchers formerly employed by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI), now at the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) at the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan (ERIM), present an empirical overview of the current scope and significance of the automotive industry in the United States. CAR’s sources of economic information are data provided by various departments of the U.S. government, industry data from public sources, and data assembled from a national survey of twenty-one motor vehicle firms that currently sell light vehicles in the U.S. market.