Features of business demography statistics in European countries: Relation of enterprises deaths and births to GDP per capita and unemployment

Berislav Zmuk (), Ksenija Dumicic and Anita Harmina
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Berislav Zmuk: University of Zagreb - Faculty of Economics and Business, Zagreb, Croatia
Anita Harmina: VERN' University of Applied Sciences, Zagreb, Croatia

Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems - scientific journal, 2020, vol. 18, issue 2A, 116-134

Abstract: The aim of this study is to analyse the variations and changes in business demography and macroeconomic features for 28 European countries in 2012 and 29 European countries in 2016 as well as the relations among these features based on the variables: enterprises birth rates, enterprises death rates, the level of GDP per capita and the unemployment rate. Using the hierarchical cluster analysis approach, the second aim of this research is to form and to compare the clusters of European countries with similar characteristics according to these variables for both years. The descriptive statistics results show that a relatively high heterogeneity of European countries relative to the observed variables was present in both years, but the change in variables averages suggests an overall improvement of economic and business demography features in 2016. The correlation analysis revealed that the death rate of enterprises had a statistically significant negative correlation with GDP per capita in both years and a significant positive correlation with the unemployment rate and with the birth rate of enterprises only in 2012. The hierarchical cluster analysis resulted in seven clusters in each observed year. The comparison of clustering solutions for 2012 and 2016 detected the European countries for which the movement between clusters could be seen as a deterioration and those for which it can be seen as an improvement in some or in all of the observed variables. These results have important implications for public policies aimed at reducing death of enterprises and unemployment.

Keywords: business demography statistics; correlation; European countries; hierarchical clustering method (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C38 M20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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