Keeping it Together: Tracking Firms on New Zealand’s Longitudinal Business Database

Richard Fabling

No 11_01, Working Papers from Motu Economic and Public Policy Research

Abstract: Having good longitudinal identifiers is important in empirical microeconomics, since researchers often need to be able to observe the same unit over time to make causal inferences. However, firm identifiers in Statistics New Zealand’s Longitudinal Business Database can be “broken” by, among other things, changes in the legal status of the firm. This paper proposes a simple method for repairing broken firm identifiers, making use of existing plant migration data. We show that making such repairs materially reduces the apparent rate of business entry and exit, and allows real economic phenomena, such as small business incorporation, to be observed for the first time.

Keywords: firm identifiers; entry and exit; plant transfers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 13 pages
Date: 2011-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-ent and nep-ict
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (40)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mtu:wpaper:11_01

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