Tabulating the QFR by Employment

N. Aaron Pancost

CES Technical Notes Series from Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau

Abstract: The Quarterly Financial Report (QFR) provides data on firms' balance sheets and income statements, aggregated into size bins. These bins are defined in terms of nominal total assets, and have remained constant since data collection began in 1977. This tabulation presents two substantial methodological problems that limit the use of QFR data: reclassification drift caused by inflation, and reclassification bias due to individual firm growth. I tabulate the QFR data by employment bins by merging it with the LBD-SSEL. I have three main findings. First, it appears that many QFR respondents belong to the same LBD firm. Second, the influence of outliers is much easier to spot in the employment tabulations. Finally, although the short time-span for which I can compute aggregates makes it difficult to detect reclassification drift, the effect of reclassification bias from firm growth does appear to bias aggregate growth rates upwards.

Keywords: QFR; LBD; SSEL (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-06
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