Douglas Thomas (Fed)

Douglas S Thomas is an economist in the Applied Economics Office at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. His work focuses on manufacturing industry costs, risks, and economic decision making. This work utilizes input-output analysis, econometrics, and survey techniques to measure costs and risks faced by manufacturing establishments. The results guide both manufacturers and research organizations in identifying high cost/loss areas of manufacturing that might have a high return when investing in research. This work also includes developing methods for economic decision making to answer questions such as, “if I have 5 potential investments, but can only afford two, which two should I select.” In addition to being published in journals, books, and reports, Thomas is working to incorporate this work into a series of software tools to guide both manufacturers and industry researchers in identifying investments with the potential of having a high return. Much of this work is available on our Applied Economics in US Manufacturing web page.