How to Construct Nationally Representative Firm-Level Data from the Orbis Global Database: New Facts on SMEs and Aggregate Implications for Industry Concentration
American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics
vol. 16,
no. 2, April 2024
(pp. 353-74)
Abstract
We construct nationally representative firm-level longitudinal data for European countries using financial statements from the Orbis database. We validate our data by comparing its coverage and firm size distribution to official statistics. We showcase two applications to show the importance of firm representativeness in understanding macroeconomic outcomes. First, we show that small and medium-sized firms account for a large share of aggregate economic activity. Second, we document that firm representativeness is important for calculating industry concentration trends over time as the share of economic activity accounted by top firms in an industry changes with the firm samples used.Citation
Kalemli- Özcan, Şebnem, Bent E. Sørensen, Carolina Villegas-Sanchez, Vadym Volosovych, and Sevcan Yeşiltaş. 2024. "How to Construct Nationally Representative Firm-Level Data from the Orbis Global Database: New Facts on SMEs and Aggregate Implications for Industry Concentration." American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 16 (2): 353-74. DOI: 10.1257/mac.20220036Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- C81 Methodology for Collecting, Estimating, and Organizing Microeconomic Data; Data Access
- D22 Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
- G30 Corporate Finance and Governance: General
- L11 Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
- L25 Firm Performance: Size, Diversification, and Scope
- L60 Industry Studies: Manufacturing: General
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