Tracking the Economy through Firm Creation: Evidence from Real-Time Administrative Data

Yannis Galanakis and Anthony Savagar

Discussion Papers from Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence

Abstract: We introduce a novel real-time dataset—Companies House Real-Time (CHRT)— that captures daily firm creation and dissolution activity for the full population of UK-registered companies. CHRT tracks official business demography statistics but is available months earlier, providing timely disaggregated indicators. We demonstrate that firm entry is a leading indicator of GDP and employment. Using a structural vector autoregression (SVAR), we find that a one-standard-deviation increase in firm entry raises GDP by 0.10.2% over the following year and generates persistent gains in employment and productivity. These results highlight the value of real-time administrative data for macroeconomic monitoring, and underscore the importance of business formation as a margin of adjustment during economic fluctuations. Our findings suggest that firm entry data should be integrated into early-warning systems and policy frameworks, particularly in times of crisis or structural change.

Keywords: Business Dynamism; Real-Time Indicators; Administrative Data; Economic Monitoring; Economic Measurement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C81 D24 L11 L25 L26 O47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-11-14
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.repository-escoe.com/id/eprint/84/1/ESCoE%20DP%202025-18.pdf

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eoe:escoed:escoe-dp-2025-18

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence, Melbourne House, Aldwych, WC2B 4PJ. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Communications Manager ().