How to Construct Nationally Representative Firm-Level Data from the Orbis Global Database: New Facts on SMEs and Aggregate Implications for Industry Concentration

Şebnem Kalemli- Özcan, Bent Sorensen, Carolina Villegas-Sanchez, Vadym Volosovych and Sevcan Yesiltas

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 2024, vol. 16, issue 2, 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.

JEL-codes: C81 D22 G30 L11 L25 L60 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Working Paper: How to Construct Nationally Representative Firm Level Data from the Orbis Global Database: New Facts on SMEs and Aggregate Implications for Industry Concentration (2022)
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DOI: 10.1257/mac.20220036

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